Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / The Art Of Voice Acting With Jon Bailey | The Christian Reeve Podcast #250

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The Art Of Voice Acting With Jon Bailey | The Christian Reeve Podcast #250 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Read
• 0:04
  podcast. Hey, wait a minute.
• 0:06
  This voice is different but familiar.
• 0:09
  Anyway, Can you believe it's the 250th episode of the Christian
• 0:13
  Read podcast? I can't.
• 0:15
  Most podcasts can't get past seven episodes, so I guess this
• 0:18
  show sucks a little bit less than the rest.
• 0:21
  Please welcome the man named almost after Christopher Reeves
• 0:24
  and long haired Michael Fassbender look alike Christian
• 0:27
  Reeve and his special guest, professional voice actor John
• 0:30
  Bailey, AKA the Epic Voice Guy. Hello and welcome to another
• 0:34
  episode of the Christian Reeve Podcast.
• 0:36
  Today's guest is an actor, voice actor, content creator, social
• 0:40
  influencer, and stand up comedian.
• 0:42
  He is John Bailey and today we're going to be talking about
• 0:45
  him and voice actor in general. Welcome to the show John Bailey.
• 0:48
  How you doing? Thank you for having me man.
• 0:50
  I really appreciate it. This, this is like the I don't
• 0:54
  want to make you feel awkward, So I'm just going to, I'm just
• 0:56
  going to say I'm going to say it, yeah.
• 0:58
  And then we'll just move on. To me, it's not often you get to
• 1:02
  meet like people that, like you look up to in in like a
• 1:05
  professional capacity. I mean, I've been pursuing.
• 1:07
  Say I'm only 5-9 so. I'm really like what, 66 foot
• 1:14
  just shut. I mean here that's not a big
• 1:15
  deal. That's not it's got the leg.
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  Down to me so. Well, it goes like, I've only
• 1:21
  been doing this professionally like four or five years.
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  But you know, like it, it's it's not often that you come across
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  someone that's like, you know, you look up to.
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  And then of course when you do, you just have to kind of keep
• 1:35
  yourself calm and and relaxed and everything.
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  So I'm going to try my best to do that.
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  But, you know, there's that. And there's also the fact that
• 1:41
  this is the 250th episode. We've been going for four years
• 1:44
  now. I wanted to.
• 1:46
  Asking me to be on here. It's shameful really.
• 1:49
  I didn't know that was possibility. 249 chances I.
• 1:52
  Didn't know that was. I didn't know that was a chance.
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  I'm hard to find everybody. I'm really easy to just, oh,
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  look, there's a big voice. Go let's.
• 2:00
  Let's let's start at the beginning.
• 2:02
  I'm sure you've been asked this before, but I'll get.
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  Time began. Not that far back, OK.
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  Not that far, no. I'm not that old.
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  No. I mean, I I first became aware
• 2:14
  of voice acting, probably it was either the early GTA game, so
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  like GTA3I used to play around with the voices in that and I
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  loved all the stuff they would do on the radio on on those
• 2:25
  games. And then a bit later on in life,
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  I think I was a teenager. I had a friend who's like, I
• 2:32
  asked him about what his father did for a living because he
• 2:34
  lived in a pretty decent house and he said his dad was a voice
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  actor. And I had no idea what that was.
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  And then I was like, well, how does that work?
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  And he said nice. House is not indicative of voice
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  actors, you say? Well, it's not.
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  I just didn't know. So many, so many would disagree
• 2:48
  with like nice house. What?
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  What is? What is he?
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  Who's he work for? I need to know who his agent is.
• 2:55
  Well, I don't know. I mean, I I probed him a bit and
• 2:56
  he said, well, his dad was apparently the voice of the
• 2:59
  Honey Poff Monster. The Sugar Poff Monster, which
• 3:02
  was like a cereal brand in the uki.
• 3:05
  Don't know if it's in states. I was.
• 3:06
  Like, but I didn't know they had a.
• 3:08
  Yeah, something something like that.
• 3:11
  Stay Puffed Marshmallow Monster Marshmallow cereal No.
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  I'm not that guy. He never talked, did he?
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  But that's, I know. That's how I came across voice
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  acting. And then years later, I realized
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  that you could sort of manipulate your voice and do
• 3:25
  different things with it. But what I want to know from
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  yourself is like, when did you kind of first become aware of
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  voice acting as a thing, as a concept?
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  I wasn't aware that it was a really understood what it was
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  until I was in my early teen years.
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  I've obviously I was aware of voice over and voice acting.
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  I just didn't understand, you know, because when we were
• 3:48
  little, they didn't really even put the actors names next to the
• 3:52
  characters that they did. It was just a list of character,
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  a list of people and we're like we know they worked on the show,
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  we have no idea who was who. So and it's just something I
• 4:03
  just played around with doing and didn't really comprehend
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  that it was a job and a business and you know, something that
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  people did for a living or, you know, and that wasn't 100% the
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  case. A lot of the case back in the
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  early, early days like Rocky and Bullwinkle era, people would
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  literally just walk in the street and say, hey, I do funny
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  voices and like, oh, you're hired.
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  That's how easy it was to get in cartoons back then.
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  Now it is literally like fighting an epic war against you
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  know you against the Empire to get to get a foot in the doorway
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  of of animation. So it's it's changed a lot.
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  But yeah I wasn't until I was like the the Internet first
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  started kind of becoming a thing where you could you know look up
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  who people were and my brother had worked for a third party
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  subsidiary of Google trying to compile information and because
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  he loved voice over too. He was like, I want to
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  specifically focus on voice acting stuff.
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  So he would find things like the very first picture of Lorenzo
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  music was the voice of Garfield. People didn't even know what
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  that guy looked like. He was just so reclusive.
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  He didn't have a lot of pictures of him.
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  But things like that weren't Google able back then because
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  the the information had not been compiled and organized,
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  categorized and where you could just type in a thing and there
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  it is. So we started learning on, you
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  know, together. Just I would get bored and he
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  would be like, I can't go. I'm working on a thing and I
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  just sit there and watch. It's like, oh, I didn't know
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  that guy did that, that voice and that.
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  And I started realized like, oh, that's a thing That's like a
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  career, like a job. Like people can do that.
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  Does that mean we can do it? You know?
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  So yeah, I just, I think I was about 13 to 15 somewhere around
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  there when I first kind of became fully aware.
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  Were you already kind of experimenting with voices, but
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  that were just like playing? I started messing around with
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  voices when I was 4. Like I didn't.
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  I just Voices is one thing, but voiceover is a career is a
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  completely different thing, right?
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  A lot of people do it as a party trick or they just think they're
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  they're great at it, you know, like you, and I'm just kidding,
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  he said. He wanted me to roast him and
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  that's as far as I go. I said roast me the intro, not
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  boast me throughout the whole show.
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  I. I just assume that that that
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  applied throughout the entire thing.
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  It's the 250 evidence. Yeah, go go nuts.
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  Pro Go. Nuts roast him 250 times for.
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  Now. Oh, OK.
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  It's not the rules, it's the rules of the.
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  Show we've got a. Counter in the bottom for every
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  roast, yeah. Like robocops kills.
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  You know, they're going to remark, apparently they're going
• 6:19
  to reboot that they're going to and they're going to do.
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  Why I actually worked on the trailers for this first reboot.
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  So it's like, because it's a good IP and they gained it
• 6:28
  really well. So they're probably like, oh,
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  it's there's another there's a still a market for RoboCop.
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  I I liked the what was it 2012? Was the re made?
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  That's. The one I worked on?
• 6:37
  Yeah. Oh.
• 6:38
  You worked on that? Oh, OK.
• 6:39
  Wow. I thought it was awesome.
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  I thought it was really, really good.
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  Something about part man, part machine, but who's in control?
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  RoboCop. That was that one of those.
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  That was that campaign. Why do you think that?
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  Why do you think it didn't kind of work out for that film?
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  Because I'll I'll be honest, I thought the story.
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  I think A. Lot of people thought it was
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  like a man kind of like watch it one and done kind of movie but
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  it just did not have the same Zing as the first film did
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  because they everything was CG. And the one of the reasons why
• 7:09
  so many people like the original was because they did all
• 7:11
  practical effects. The blood squibs, it actually
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  has real liquids shooting out of people's chest.
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  And they'd replay when they when Hollywood started doing the
• 7:18
  Frank the the Sin City thing and they started using fake fake
• 7:21
  blood everywhere, everybody just started going nuts.
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  It was like, oh it's fake blood now it's OK and it looked
• 7:25
  terrible. But the one thing they didn't
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  think about was like, well, we can do this, but it looks awful.
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  It doesn't get real. I can't get a real like how just
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  traumatic the original opening scene.
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  Of showing the guy right in the privates and blows his own
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  privates. But they they just, they were
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  just a bunch of guys just shooting at him for just like
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  like well. See the way he died, the way he
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  was murdered was awful man. Point blank range it.
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  Was he? He's not.
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  Foreman's dad from the 70s Show of all people.
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  I figured he would just call him a dumb ass and walk his way.
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  But yeah, I just. I just.
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  I messed around with doing voices when I was three or four
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  because my mom was like oh, I can do.
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  I can do what was it I I can do. I can do Grover's voice.
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  I'm like bet I can do it better than you can, you know.
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  And then later on she was like I can do Yoda's voice.
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  I'm I says Grover with the speed of impediment.
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  Dude, that's the same voice you did last time.
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  So it was more of a competitive thing.
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  Why? I actually first started getting
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  interested in doing and but I I've been practicing and doing
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  voices just because it's something very, I don't know,
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  parrots imitate. You know, you hear animals that
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  can like instantly parrot stuff. I just kind of picked up on that
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  very, very quickly as a very young kid.
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  But as far as being fully conscious of the career, that
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  was probably a deck a little less than a decade later.
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  I think it's interesting as well that you make the distinction
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  because I think not many people realize this as well that like
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  voice acting and voice overs 2 very different things and like
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  well. It's it's 11 is what you're
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  doing. 1 is what the career is like.
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  The career is called voice. It's just so weird.
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  People get so weird over semantics.
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  People want to call themselves professional for different
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  reasons and I'm like, OK, if if you're really good at what you
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  do and you're trained and you're booking, then you can say yes,
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  I'm a professional. Otherwise, you can say I'm as
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  good as a professional, but I'm not doing it.
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  Because if you say you're a professional and you're not
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  booking and you haven't had training, people are
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  automatically going to assume that those two things are
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  attached. When you say I'm a professional
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  voice actor, and. If yeah, I agree with you like.
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  This, and you're going to instantly have this weird debate
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  over well, technically you're, you know, you're a voice actor,
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  but you're not a professional. And then I have people getting
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  weird about like, oh, you're this is a true story.
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  By the way. The voice of the He was a guy
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  that was run through the wringer over during the ME Tube
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  movement. Victoria Mignona, It was like
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  when I first met him, he, he the guy that was running the
• 9:47
  convention in my local. We'd never done a big convention
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  before and I was local, but I was still brand new at Voice
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  Over. I've only been in three years or
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  so, and the guy running the convention had a local anime
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  store. And he's like, you got to go
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  with me. I'm like, why?
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  I don't know who he is. I don't watch his stuff.
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  He's like, yeah, but you're the only voice actor we have.
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  And like, OK, if you want to take it that far, but all right,
• 10:07
  cool. So I get there and he's like,
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  he's now John's here is our local voice actor.
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  He's like, oh, what have you been in?
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  That was his first question. What have you been in?
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  I hate that question. You eliminate 90% of the jobs
• 10:17
  out there. When you say what have you been
• 10:18
  in, you know, because most of it's commercial work was like,
• 10:21
  well, I wasn't, you know, and I started to listen.
• 10:23
  But I actually had a list of stuff.
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  I was like, I did this and this and this and this and I do ADR
• 10:26
  for these guys. He's like, oh, so you're not a
• 10:28
  real voice actor, You're a voice over artist?
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  I'm like, oh. You're not a semantic.
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  You're a semantic. Like, yeah, it was a very, like
• 10:36
  backhanded compliment. And he just give this like, I I
• 10:39
  can say whatever I want. I'm Victoria Mignona.
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  And I'm like, what was that for? What the heck, man?
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  I'm a voice actor just as much as you.
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  When I fill in for actors that are bigger than you are and
• 10:46
  nobody even knows it's me, that means I did a really good job.
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  That means it's acting, bro. Like, I don't know what part of
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  what I do is voice over artistry because it's still acting and
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  it's still using my voice. So voice acting, who cares what
• 10:59
  it's called? You don't have to be a jerk
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  about it, though. Couple of things.
• 11:02
  One, I, I, I can so honestly relate to what you're saying
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  there when you say like how it undermines everything you've
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  done because I get that question all the time and you know I, I
• 11:11
  I'm still very much trying to get into the industry.
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  I'm just four or five years in. I I've been in some big
• 11:17
  productions, but like on a small scale and yeah.
• 11:20
  The same thing it's it's like a decade and 1/2 at this, and I
• 11:22
  can see it was in marbles. What if?
• 11:24
  But who were you? Yeah.
• 11:27
  Well, you know, the main cast is the original cast of, So who Can
• 11:31
  I be except the Extra Voices, man?
• 11:33
  Like, I'm not gonna be Mark Gronolo.
• 11:34
  Doesn't it drive you nuts though?
• 11:36
  Like it's. It's it is what it is.
• 11:38
  People until, until you're that thing.
• 11:40
  That's why when I first started booking characters with names
• 11:43
  that they're recognizable that can instantly say, like, oh, I'm
• 11:45
  this guy in this thing. And then, oh, you know, so it
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  did. But it's like what I do work on,
• 11:52
  it's the stuff that I work on is bigger than the the roles in it
• 11:55
  that I work on that I do so. And I don't have a problem with
• 11:58
  that because that's where I I have AI, have a friend, and I
• 12:00
  have no problem saying his name because he's an awesome guy.
• 12:02
  But my buddy David Chen has done ADR in so many movies.
• 12:06
  He makes more money than most of us combined and nobody's
• 12:08
  probably even knows who he who he is because he's not a main
• 12:11
  character. He does ADR, but his list of
• 12:14
  Marvel and like all these amazing films he's been in, I'm
• 12:17
  like, dude, that may that guy's making bank.
• 12:18
  And it doesn't matter if he wasn't the voice of such and
• 12:21
  such. And so and so he was in this
• 12:22
  Marvel movie and this Marvel movie and this DC movie and that
• 12:25
  movie. Like he's just racking up jobs
• 12:27
  and it looks better on his resume because I stopped trying
• 12:30
  to put a picture of all the characters that I did in the
• 12:33
  background because most of them are NPCS and they're not mains
• 12:36
  or whatever. It's not enough of them to fill
• 12:37
  out a whole sheet. I was trying to be like Steve
• 12:39
  Bloom when I first and I was like, I can, I have a character
• 12:42
  portfolio things. And I was like, man, I don't
• 12:44
  really have a lot. So I was like, you know, it's
• 12:46
  probably better just to list my resume of stuff that I've worked
• 12:48
  on, worked on this show and this movie and this movie.
• 12:50
  And all of a sudden people were like, wow, he works in movies.
• 12:52
  And she was like, yeah, dude, I don't.
• 12:56
  I'm not the voice of such and such and so and so, but I did
• 12:58
  work on that movie. I I think it comes down to
• 13:01
  perception as well and and like how you because it sounds like
• 13:05
  we might have a similar work ethic here where it's like my my
• 13:08
  focus is not like oh I want to become as famous as possible or
• 13:11
  well as well known as possible. Like my focus is I want to do
• 13:14
  this for a career and make a living from this and this be my
• 13:17
  work. That's.
• 13:18
  Close My mine is like I want to pay the bills and not be
• 13:21
  homeless. That's.
• 13:22
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right.
• 13:25
  But like for me it's like. Just point something in the room
• 13:28
  and tell me what you want me to voice.
• 13:29
  I'll voice it for you, man. Come on.
• 13:30
  I need money to pay bills. It's the same.
• 13:33
  It wasn't. It was never like, oh, I want to
• 13:35
  be a big career thing. It was just something that I was
• 13:37
  good at, I enjoyed doing and it paid the bills.
• 13:40
  And then I just focused on being the best at as you can.
• 13:42
  And and then there's there's 90% of the work out there, which is
• 13:46
  just job and some people be like, oh, that's cool, that's
• 13:48
  cool. And like for me, it's just work.
• 13:50
  But then that 55 to 10% of the cool stuff, when you're a nerd
• 13:54
  and you wear Transformers hats in public and you know, then
• 13:59
  then whenever you're like, oh crap, I just booked a Marvel or
• 14:01
  a Star War or whatever and you're like, oh that that's the
• 14:04
  good stuff. That's that makes it worth doing
• 14:06
  the job when you are into the same kind of stuff that I'm
• 14:08
  into. So there are other jobs that
• 14:11
  have paid better. For example, I'm not the biggest
• 14:14
  fan of Hotel Transylvania. I thought the first couple
• 14:16
  movies were great, but it's obviously made for for younger
• 14:19
  children. Like at the time my kids were
• 14:21
  very young and they just freaking loved the whole the
• 14:23
  whole shtick. I'm also not the hugest fan of
• 14:26
  Adam Sandler. I think he's great but he's
• 14:27
  that's like he's not my favorite.
• 14:29
  If I had to pick between some other guy that was more you
• 14:32
  know, into than him, I would go see that movie instead.
• 14:35
  But I booked this massive thing for Hotel Transylvania and that
• 14:39
  becomes a resume thing now. I was like I filled in for Drac
• 14:41
  in Hotel Transylvania and I did 50 something spots and I did a
• 14:44
  Happy Meal commercial. Those are that's a pretty big
• 14:46
  thing compared to you know other jobs but it's not like I oh, I
• 14:50
  guess I I I only want to work on Adam Sandler because I'm only
• 14:53
  you know it's I don't get to be picky it's just those jobs look
• 14:57
  better for me and help me book other work because you never
• 15:00
  know down the road they're like because they're still making
• 15:02
  that stuff and I'm like oh here's a link to some of the
• 15:04
  stuff that I did for this and that might help me get the job
• 15:07
  or whatever. You know what I mean.
• 15:08
  So things like that, I don't, I don't get rid of auditions.
• 15:11
  I I try to hold on to anything that has references because I
• 15:14
  might need it later on because you never know when something
• 15:16
  can go from just a job or a potential job to actually a
• 15:20
  resume thing that can help you get more work later on.
• 15:23
  So it's it's all so complicated. It's I've heard people call it a
• 15:26
  machine before and I didn't really understand that until I
• 15:28
  realize just how many working parts there are in order to be
• 15:31
  successful and actually do enough work to get the bills
• 15:33
  paid. Especially when you live in a
• 15:34
  city as expensive in Los Angeles, because there's only
• 15:37
  about 3 cities you can really do this from in that in the United
• 15:39
  States and be super successful. Atlanta, it's me.
• 15:43
  It's more on camera background work.
• 15:46
  A million. There's a million of my
• 15:48
  background jobs in in Atlanta and some people actually get
• 15:50
  into go from background to foreground in Atlanta.
• 15:53
  But it's so muggy and hot and it's a lot more crime.
• 15:56
  And it's just this it's not as expensive, but it's still pretty
• 15:59
  expensive And then New York forget about it.
• 16:02
  And that's not, that's no pun intended.
• 16:04
  I'm not doing a New York accent. And then LA.
• 16:07
  And the reason why I chose LA was because they have free
• 16:11
  special needs services here and it's been extremely helpful with
• 16:14
  my own kid. And he's 21 now, so the older he
• 16:17
  gets, the more difficult it can be.
• 16:19
  So I just didn't see any other option that worked with my
• 16:22
  career and worked for him besides here.
• 16:25
  But the fact that I have to make, at a minimum, I have to
• 16:28
  make 6 to $7000 a month just to get by everybody that makes it
• 16:33
  sound like I'm rich. That is just to break even.
• 16:36
  I have to make six to seven grand a month, just if I was
• 16:40
  single, you know, and I mean by singles, I mean if I was just
• 16:43
  solo by myself in an apartment, you know, some tiny little
• 16:46
  studio apt, I could probably cut that in half.
• 16:49
  But because I have children and because I need, you know, a
• 16:54
  booth and things that I can't, I couldn't do in a studio
• 16:56
  apartment, I'd have to rig up something not nearly as nice as
• 16:58
  this. Yeah, that.
• 17:00
  It's just, it's all depends on cost effectiveness.
• 17:03
  So people can do it like you do from their own home or they
• 17:06
  already live with minimal stuff. But once you the higher up you
• 17:09
  go, the more you have to start making tough decisions.
• 17:12
  Like is it worth for me to spend this money to live in this
• 17:15
  situation, to book more work? Because it's literally the
• 17:18
  goldfish. And if you know what I mean by
• 17:20
  the goldfish, if you put a goldfish in a bowl this big, it
• 17:22
  will always stay that small. If you put them in a bigger
• 17:24
  container, that goldfish will continue to grow to fill in that
• 17:26
  space. That is what human beings do.
• 17:28
  We fill in the space we have. I don't feel any different than
• 17:32
  when I had a $400.00 house now in a month and I was only making
• 17:34
  $300.00 a week working at my old job that has a forklift driver.
• 17:38
  Then when I'm making, you know, a couple of thousand a week, but
• 17:41
  I know that at the end of the month I'm going to have this
• 17:43
  much money leftover and then bills are already back to again.
• 17:47
  It gets really big. Unless you're really good at at
• 17:50
  at cost management and budgeting, which I'm not.
• 17:54
  You can make it work out here. You really can, if you may.
• 17:56
  If you If I made what I made, but I was #1 younger, #2 on on
• 18:00
  my own, and something smaller with less bills, I wouldn't be
• 18:03
  running air. I wouldn't be running heat.
• 18:04
  I wouldn't be doing anything that I'd do to make everybody
• 18:07
  else in this house comfortable to save money.
• 18:09
  And then I may actually be like, Oh yeah, I'm a voice actor.
• 18:12
  I make good money. Not if you have a family, not if
• 18:14
  you have financial obligations. So solo folks are more likely to
• 18:18
  be able to make a better living at this because the rest of us
• 18:22
  are just barely getting by. We're not really living off of
• 18:24
  it. But you have to hustle.
• 18:26
  You can't just. OK, I booked a job.
• 18:28
  I'm going to sit here and wait for the money to roll in.
• 18:31
  I don't have to do anything yet. You have to audition every day.
• 18:33
  If you can't, if you don't get auditions, you have to go find
• 18:35
  auditions. If you can't find auditions, you
• 18:37
  have to figure out something else.
• 18:38
  Create content that actually generate revenue, whatever you
• 18:41
  can freaking do. I've had to Uber Eats.
• 18:43
  I've had to do menial regular, like putting stuff on the shelf
• 18:49
  kind of jobs. I've had to do anything I could
• 18:51
  do just to get by to keep my schedule open.
• 18:53
  To continue to be able to do this, I've had to do a third
• 18:55
  shift job. Like after regular voice over
• 18:58
  recording hours were over just to kind of supplement the income
• 19:01
  you it's literally a grind. They call it a grind for reason.
• 19:03
  It's a gig economy because you have to go job to job to job,
• 19:05
  job, job. It's not for most people.
• 19:08
  You go in with your resume, thankfully, they give you the
• 19:11
  job, you're hired, you have that job, you're there.
• 19:13
  Unless you screw it up, you're and you're fired or you're let
• 19:15
  go because the business goes you're there.
• 19:17
  We have to go through 1000 of those applications a week and
• 19:23
  get rejections almost all the time.
• 19:26
  And it's like, Nope, sorry, sorry, we'll call you.
• 19:29
  We'll and just keep going. And it's just you have to have
• 19:32
  thick skin. You have to have patience, You
• 19:34
  have to have perseverance. You just have to freaking keep
• 19:36
  going no matter what people tell you.
• 19:38
  And you're going to question yourself and think that you
• 19:41
  know, am I doing it wrong? Am I in the wrong industry?
• 19:44
  Am I not doing it? Do I need to do this or that?
• 19:46
  Just get, get, get honest coaching from somebody that's
• 19:49
  affordable and just don't quit. You just have to keep going and
• 19:52
  going and going and going. Even if it looks like your
• 19:54
  resume is this big, it doesn't matter.
• 19:57
  There's just like you said, there's a way to to make your
• 19:59
  resume look better. But it's all these different
• 20:00
  moving parts. It's it's promoting yourself on
• 20:02
  social media because you never know something on there might
• 20:05
  end up getting your voice over work or making your voice over
• 20:07
  career even bigger than it already is.
• 20:09
  I don't think my my career was as big as it was until I started
• 20:12
  TikTok. And the main reason why is
• 20:14
  because my other socials did. OK, you know what I mean?
• 20:17
  They did all right. Like I had over 100,000 on
• 20:19
  YouTube. That's OK.
• 20:21
  I had 20 something thousand on Twitter, which I quit Twitter
• 20:23
  'cause it just never it got. It was stuck there for a a
• 20:26
  decade or so. I was like this is not going
• 20:28
  anywhere. And it just got so political and
• 20:30
  just so I moved over to threads and even that within a month or
• 20:33
  two I've got 17,000 followers. So that one at least I saw
• 20:37
  growth on and then I had 100,000 on Instagram.
• 20:41
  Tiktok is you know, it would just meh, it was like 50,000.
• 20:44
  It did pretty good at the very beginning.
• 20:46
  But then as I started just kind of understanding how it worked,
• 20:49
  it started to did. This machine started working
• 20:52
  better on its own, and then I'd have viral videos pop up every
• 20:55
  once in a while. And then all of a sudden I've
• 20:56
  got 800,000 followers. And now combined across social
• 21:00
  media, I've got a million people.
• 21:01
  And then I started getting phone calls from my agency saying,
• 21:04
  hey, maximum effort wants to work with you.
• 21:05
  Hey, this company apartments.com wants to work with you, Rallies
• 21:08
  wants to work with you, Checkers want.
• 21:09
  All of a sudden, what my agents and managers don't have time to
• 21:13
  do, which is literally go door to door and find those clients
• 21:16
  that don't know what they're looking for until they find it
• 21:18
  or see it. They start noticing it because
• 21:20
  all of a sudden, oh, you're out there.
• 21:22
  I've seen you. I've heard you.
• 21:23
  I know you from a thing. Everybody.
• 21:24
  I'm, I like to say, in fact I may just coin this as my, you
• 21:28
  know, my business card or website thing.
• 21:29
  I'm the guy everybody's heard but nobody's heard of because
• 21:33
  I'm in a little bit of everything.
• 21:34
  And people like, I'll just be talking to somebody, oh, I was
• 21:37
  in that, oh, I worked on that or I did this and they're like, I
• 21:39
  mean you're, I've heard you 1000 times and everybody knew it was
• 21:42
  you. I was like, yeah, that's because
• 21:43
  you have to do this to you in order to survive.
• 21:45
  It's literally a survival thing. You just have to book everything
• 21:47
  you possibly can, which means putting yourself out there as
• 21:50
  much as possible, not just sitting back and waiting for
• 21:52
  your agent or manager to bring things to you.
• 21:54
  You have to actively make content, promote yourself, show
• 21:56
  people what you can do and doing it in an entertaining or at the
• 22:00
  very least a captivating like, oh, this guy's good or this
• 22:02
  lady's man, She really knows what she's doing.
• 22:03
  You know what she'd be perfect for, You know what?
• 22:05
  But he'd be great for because they are looking for people and
• 22:07
  they think that if I get this person, this is what I'll get.
• 22:11
  If I hire this person, if I get Christian Reeve, this is how
• 22:13
  many people it will reach. This is the audience demographic
• 22:16
  that it's going to go, does this guy work with our brand?
• 22:18
  Does that fit for us? And if you don't have anything
• 22:21
  out there, how are they going to know you're there?
• 22:23
  How do they going to know that you're good or what?
• 22:24
  You know what I mean? Because that I've literally
• 22:27
  witnessed studios getting burned by hiring social media people
• 22:31
  who did not do what I do already.
• 22:33
  So I think there's a big difference between somebody who
• 22:34
  doesn't already do professional voice over work and is creating
• 22:37
  social media content and somebody who's just making
• 22:40
  social media content and has no training and no background in
• 22:43
  voice over, they just do voices or they just do impressions or
• 22:45
  they just do whatever. I've seen them get hired in the
• 22:47
  studio not knowing what they're doing and get scolded by the
• 22:50
  directors. Like no, you can't do that.
• 22:52
  Don't do that. Don't do this.
• 22:53
  There will be a few examples of that, like just.
• 22:55
  Give you an I will give you an example.
• 22:57
  When you're doing looping on a movie, you cannot mention any
• 22:59
  brand names. You can't mention any celebrity
• 23:02
  in any. You can't say, hey, you want to
• 23:03
  go to the Lakers game. You can't say, oh, did you see
• 23:06
  that Wrexham game last? You can't say any of that stuff
• 23:08
  because all those things are copyrighted.
• 23:10
  You get to keep everything just bland and generic like I have
• 23:13
  to. A great way to do this is to go
• 23:16
  on a hike or go out in public mall, whatever and just pay
• 23:19
  attention. Don't talk, don't go with
• 23:20
  anybody else. Just pay attention or even
• 23:22
  record the conversations that you hear when you walk by
• 23:25
  because most of that is what is recorded and put in the
• 23:27
  background of films and TV shows and very rarely will you hear
• 23:31
  them saying, hey, did you see the new Jason Statham movie
• 23:33
  Beekeeper last night? You can't say that in the
• 23:34
  background of a movie unless you want to pay Jason Statham and
• 23:37
  Beekeeper a whole lot of money. And I've seen people just mess
• 23:39
  up like that over or they just they just clearly were not good
• 23:43
  actors. They that's the same voice you
• 23:45
  did last time and then you all of a sudden you realize oh they
• 23:47
  don't have any original characters.
• 23:49
  They only do impressions and now they don't know what to do
• 23:50
  because they're having to come up with new voices that they
• 23:54
  and, you know, so you're you'll be stuck as a deer, like a deer
• 23:57
  in the headlights, getting ready for the car to hit instead of
• 23:59
  knowing what to do. This is why I tell people get
• 24:02
  freaking coaching. I used to be against coaching,
• 24:04
  not against coaching in general, but against the coaching
• 24:06
  industry because it was so predatory.
• 24:09
  I saw too many people. Hey, for 500 bucks I can make
• 24:12
  you the next big deal. And then they don't do anything.
• 24:15
  And they're like, well, you need my advance course for only $1000
• 24:17
  and they just, they're literally milking these people for all
• 24:20
  their cash. And that industry blew up right
• 24:22
  around the time that voiceover became more in the spotlight.
• 24:24
  And people go, oh, you can just talk into a microphone for a
• 24:26
  living. Trust me, if you haven't been
• 24:28
  listening up to this point, there is way more to it than
• 24:31
  that. It's not just talking into a
• 24:32
  microphone. This is talking into a
• 24:34
  microphone. What we do for a living is not
• 24:37
  just talking into a microphone. It's called voice acting for a
• 24:39
  reason. Just because number one,
• 24:41
  somebody told you you have a cool voice doesn't mean you
• 24:44
  should be a professional voice actor. #2 acting is the most
• 24:47
  important part of voice acting. Be a good actor.
• 24:50
  Don't worry about what you can do or change in your voice.
• 24:52
  Be the best actor you could be. If you can do those other
• 24:54
  things, that's great. But I know people who cannot
• 24:57
  change their voices at all and had careers that blow both of
• 24:59
  ours out of the water combined. Tom Kane is a great example.
• 25:02
  Tom Kane literally just talks like this all the time, but he's
• 25:06
  a great actor. He can't change his voice, but
• 25:08
  he can talk like this. And before his stroke, he was in
• 25:11
  Power of Girls, he was in Star Wars, he was Yoda, he was like
• 25:14
  Admiral Ackbar. He was tons of characters and
• 25:16
  across dozens of shows. But he doesn't do improv at all.
• 25:19
  I watched him on my own hand, on my own eyes at a convention
• 25:22
  where they gave him an improv. He's like, I I can't do improv.
• 25:26
  So he doesn't have the same set of skills as some of other other
• 25:28
  voice exercise. But yet he had a great career in
• 25:30
  cartoons, which is what most of us want to do.
• 25:33
  And it just proves that if you're a great actor, all those
• 25:36
  extra voices you can do don't matter or you can't do it don't
• 25:39
  matter. Some people just have a good
• 25:41
  narrator voice. But yes, guess what?
• 25:42
  They're making way more money than we are because they're the
• 25:44
  voice of an entire network or they're just doing promo after
• 25:47
  promo after promo, which is good money.
• 25:49
  So it this industry is massive. They're probably jobs that
• 25:52
  you've never even thought about. When you go to to a one of those
• 25:56
  big supermarkets that have the LEDTV screens at the end,
• 25:59
  somebody got paid to do that specific spot that's playing on
• 26:02
  that specific screen in that specific store.
• 26:04
  It's not ATV AD. The one that blew my mind was
• 26:07
  some toys. Talk.
• 26:09
  Somebody recorded that. I love it.
• 26:11
  I've been toys so. I love it when you get something
• 26:13
  like really random. Like like I remember seeing one
• 26:16
  person who did like the train voices for a particular network,
• 26:20
  like, you know, And like, I realised like so many of those
• 26:23
  voices. And this is what I was saying
• 26:25
  earlier as well when I was talking about the difference
• 26:29
  between a voice actor and a voice over artist.
• 26:32
  Like, I know you said like, oh, it's semantics.
• 26:34
  But like, I don't know, I, I disagree a little bit in the
• 26:36
  sense that like as you mentioned before, voice acting, acting,
• 26:41
  you have to act with your voice and convey emotion and do, you
• 26:44
  know, portray these different characters and really build the
• 26:47
  voice and build the character purely through the voice.
• 26:50
  Whereas the voice overs, you know it, they're looking for
• 26:53
  that particular thing, you know. So if it's like the train in the
• 26:57
  UK, it would be like please mind the gap.
• 27:00
  Between the trains and the plane or and the voice that you hear
• 27:03
  in the airplanes, that's like. Yeah.
• 27:05
  Or like, you know, they're looking for that particular
• 27:08
  voice. And do you know what I mean?
• 27:10
  Like if you were to do like a banking commercial like you have
• 27:12
  in your head right now, an idea of what that sounds like and I
• 27:15
  do too. And we'll probably both throw
• 27:17
  something different and we'll run with that.
• 27:21
  And you can do variations higher or whatever, But like the
• 27:24
  commercials and the corporate side of things, I feel like
• 27:26
  they're just looking for something very specific and I
• 27:29
  tend to go, I tend to be less adventurous in those roles
• 27:34
  versus when it's voice acting, I go nuts see what I can do.
• 27:37
  The reason why I don't use voice over artists is because it's
• 27:40
  really just a fancier term for a voice actor.
• 27:43
  And the problem with using it is, even though I think it's a
• 27:46
  better term because it kind of is an overall encompassing job
• 27:51
  description for us, Too many people misinterpret voice over
• 27:55
  artist as somebody who only does narration.
• 27:57
  They only do cookie. They're only announcers.
• 28:00
  They're only and that all of a sudden you typecast yourself as
• 28:02
  the, oh you're a voice over artist.
• 28:04
  No, I do acting. I'm a voice actor.
• 28:06
  I know it sounds a little horror, it's a little Pavo, but
• 28:11
  it's it's literally more descriptive of what I do because
• 28:14
  voice over is not the only thing that I do.
• 28:16
  And voice acting is a little bit different than voice over.
• 28:18
  The fact that you're not just voicing over one thing
• 28:20
  continuously where it's like a reality series and you're just
• 28:22
  the narrator or you're the voice of the guy telling the people to
• 28:25
  buy the thing in the commercial, you're also the dad in the
• 28:28
  commercial or you're the character in the cartoon.
• 28:30
  It it feel like, OK, voice acting is voice over artist plus
• 28:34
  other stuff. So instead of just saying voice
• 28:36
  over artist and having people be confused like, oh, OK, so you're
• 28:38
  just, that's all you do like no, no, no, no, no, that doesn't
• 28:41
  explain near what I do. So voice acting makes more
• 28:43
  sense. And in the industry, the the
• 28:46
  clients out here in the industry, they don't care.
• 28:49
  They use those terms interchangeably.
• 28:50
  Like neither one of them matter. You're a voice guy, period.
• 28:52
  If it has the word voice in it, that's what you are.
• 28:55
  So voice over artist, voice actor to them that's there's no
• 28:57
  difference. But a lot of people do get those
• 28:58
  two terms confused and think that that just means one thing,
• 29:01
  that means other things. And I'm like, I figure if you do
• 29:03
  all of it, voice actor makes more sense because that includes
• 29:06
  voice over, that includes voice acting, that includes just
• 29:08
  anything voice related. It's all there because it's
• 29:11
  still performance based acting as performance doing announcing
• 29:14
  is still performing. So that's the only reason.
• 29:17
  The main reason why I stuck with that is because too many.
• 29:18
  I had to go back and explain the difference between voice over
• 29:22
  voice over artist and voice actor like I'm doing right now
• 29:25
  and then you've added 5 minutes to the conversation and the job
• 29:28
  that you're getting ready to go do.
• 29:30
  So I just wanted to explain it. I don't have a problem with
• 29:33
  people using that term. I just get tired of.
• 29:35
  It's like when I my my son is not full blown autistic.
• 29:39
  To explain exactly what he's what he has would take 10
• 29:41
  minutes. So it's just easier to say, oh,
• 29:43
  he's on the spectrum that way. I don't spend 10 minutes
• 29:46
  explaining it to you. That's fair enough.
• 29:48
  So sorry to be annoying with that I I.
• 29:50
  Guess I guess we're supposed to explain it here.
• 29:52
  It's fine. This setting it's OK.
• 29:54
  I guess it's just for me, I always just looked at like voice
• 29:57
  over is more like the corporate side of things and then voice
• 29:59
  acting as more the creative side.
• 30:01
  Voice over doesn't necessarily have to be, doesn't have to be
• 30:04
  corporate because just think about it.
• 30:05
  Sam Elliott did narration in The Big Lebowski and it's very much
• 30:09
  voice over, but it's also voice acting because he's also a
• 30:12
  character in the movie. So it it just they they're
• 30:15
  they're so like wibbly, wobbly, timey whimy stuff.
• 30:18
  That's all. It's just to each their own.
• 30:21
  I figured it makes more sense for somebody that's over in
• 30:24
  England or in the British area to say voice over to artists
• 30:27
  because it just sounds better. It just it's an instant like oh
• 30:30
  oh fancy, oh it's Big mile. In America.
• 30:34
  We're just voice actors. We're just doing the voice.
• 30:37
  We're just voice actors during voice acting, man.
• 30:39
  That's all of it is. You know your voice is going to
• 30:43
  be a. Whole lot better if you did so
• 30:49
  something that you touched on a little bit earlier because I
• 30:52
  know that you've done some work. You played in Powerpuff Girls
• 30:58
  the long way back and as you mentioned before, there was a,
• 31:03
  there was a guy who was the original voice of that and this.
• 31:05
  I know, I know. There's a lot of roles
• 31:06
  throughout your career that you do.
• 31:08
  Where would voice replication be the right term?
• 31:12
  Would that be? I don't know what just I don't
• 31:16
  know what would be. It's.
• 31:16
  More like a substitution than anything else.
• 31:18
  It's like in it's like in sports balls, when they have to send in
• 31:22
  a new player to replace the other player because they're
• 31:23
  injured or unavailable. Maybe they're sick that day.
• 31:27
  What is that? Number one Mojo JoJo.
• 31:29
  That was a fan. That was a fan made film, by the
• 31:31
  way, So it was not an official recasting of Mojo JoJo.
• 31:34
  I never. Yeah, it still counts, man.
• 31:35
  I I don't. It counts.
• 31:37
  It's a job as a job, you know. Job as a job.
• 31:38
  But there are. I have officially filled in for
• 31:41
  20 plus voices and Transformers, and I'm definitely not the
• 31:44
  original actor because those guys are in their mid to late
• 31:46
  80s now. But it all comes down to health
• 31:51
  and availability and willingness.
• 31:53
  If they're I I always double check and say, OK, so I just,
• 31:56
  for example, a lot of people give me, well, I won't say a
• 31:59
  lot, some people give me crap about the fact of me being
• 32:02
  Optimus Prime. And they're like, they're little
• 32:04
  cullinites who think that only really only Peter Cullen can be
• 32:08
  Optimus Prime's voice. Well, tell that to the nine guys
• 32:10
  who have voiced him so far, because Alan Tudyk's doing
• 32:13
  Optimus Prime. I don't hear him getting any
• 32:15
  Flack. Chris Hemsworth going to be
• 32:16
  Optimus Prime. I don't hear anybody giving him
• 32:18
  any Flack. Neil Kaplan.
• 32:19
  Everybody forgot that. Jake Fushi, I can get There's
• 32:22
  literally Gary Chalk, David Kaye.
• 32:24
  There's a lot of voice actors that have done Optimus Prime's
• 32:27
  voice. Yes, Peter Collin is the OG
• 32:28
  original voice. If I get an audition or in a job
• 32:32
  offer for Optimus Prime specifically, the very first
• 32:35
  thing I do in every voice actor, voice over artist, whatever you
• 32:38
  want to call yourself should do. The right thing is to say I'm
• 32:42
  not going to touch this. If he's able and willing and
• 32:45
  wants to do it, double check with him first.
• 32:47
  And if he just outright refuses or there's some legal reason why
• 32:50
  he cannot do that, then I will be happy to submit.
• 32:53
  And when I say submit, I don't mean take the job, I mean submit
• 32:56
  along with everybody else that's obviously submitting for it.
• 32:59
  I've just gotten, I've gotten very good at letting them know
• 33:04
  like, look, I do great sound alike, especially for
• 33:06
  Transformers because I've been watching this show since I was a
• 33:08
  child and I've been getting good at these voices for 40 years
• 33:11
  now. I'm really great for, especially
• 33:13
  for ADR, like there's there's some, there's some drama on the
• 33:18
  Internet from couple years ago where somebody asked Peter and
• 33:21
  Frank, you know, about being recast and stuff and they were
• 33:24
  talking about the Netflix series, which I had nothing to
• 33:26
  do with. I actually wanted to audition
• 33:28
  for it, but I never got one, so I had nothing to do with that
• 33:30
  show. And there's a difference between
• 33:32
  recasting and somebody doing temporary voice over work, which
• 33:35
  most actors, if you're worth your weight in salt, have come
• 33:39
  to LA and done work. They've done looping.
• 33:41
  They've done ADR before. They've been extra voices,
• 33:43
  background voices and stuff. They've done exactly what me and
• 33:45
  my friend David Chin that I mentioned earlier, there's a lot
• 33:48
  of that out here. Peter Cohen has done that.
• 33:50
  Peter Cohen's done ADR for so many movies.
• 33:52
  He was the Predator and Predator.
• 33:53
  That's still considered ADR. He was gremlins and gremlins.
• 33:56
  That's ADR guys. Those little background sounds
• 33:58
  and the people that are running around, none of that stuff was
• 34:00
  recorded. They're all going and then
• 34:01
  somebody else goes in this booth so they can mix the track
• 34:04
  separately. That's how ADR works.
• 34:06
  All the different audio layers are different.
• 34:09
  Only the primary actors are actually talking with hot mics.
• 34:12
  That's the ones that the boom mics are picking up.
• 34:14
  Everybody else in the background.
• 34:15
  If it's a club and they're dancing, there's no music,
• 34:17
  there's nobody talking. All that stuff's rerecorded and
• 34:20
  added in later on. Peter has done that job himself.
• 34:22
  So is Frank. That's the job most voice actors
• 34:24
  do. He after answering the question
• 34:27
  that they get a lot, how does it feel to be recast?
• 34:29
  He it looked like the thing was over.
• 34:32
  There was a pause. He's like, let me tell you
• 34:33
  another story. And then he went to talk about
• 34:34
  Bumblebee movie and I'm like, that's different.
• 34:36
  You were never recast. He refused to work for scale.
• 34:40
  And I understood because the last movie had a much bigger
• 34:43
  budget, he was expecting way bigger money and that he they
• 34:45
  said he just outright said no because I had them double
• 34:46
  checked. I was like, well, I'd rather it
• 34:47
  be me than some crappy intern going transform and roll out.
• 34:51
  So I took the job and I did 3 little tiny sessions just till
• 34:54
  they ironed out the lines and that was it.
• 34:56
  And then Peter came in and did the Optimus Prime voice.
• 35:00
  That is nothing wrong with that job.
• 35:02
  There's I can't tell you how many movie screenings that you
• 35:04
  get out in LA where it's like the following movie is not
• 35:07
  completely finished. If you hear voices that don't
• 35:08
  sound the same, that's because it's still in production.
• 35:10
  Those are me. Those are guys like me that do
• 35:13
  those voices for the they're they're still working on the
• 35:15
  film. That's just pre and post
• 35:16
  production stuff. Those voices are never going to
• 35:18
  be final. Sometimes we do get final
• 35:20
  voices, like I got to be Shockwave and Soundwave and
• 35:22
  Bubba. That's great and that's
• 35:24
  accredited role. It's not just some background
• 35:25
  where I'm just ADR and I'm just in the loop group.
• 35:28
  Same thing with Detective Pikachu.
• 35:29
  They actually put additional voices.
• 35:30
  There's my name because they did it alphabetically.
• 35:32
  I'm right there at the very beginning, but most of the time
• 35:34
  we don't even get credited. We still get paid and we still
• 35:36
  make residuals. But I'm background voices and in
• 35:39
  a dozen movies and nobody even knows that that's me.
• 35:41
  That means I did a good job. That does not mean I was
• 35:43
  stealing any roles from anybody else.
• 35:45
  I always double check. I always make sure another
• 35:47
  situation happened where Futurama was coming back.
• 35:51
  John DiMaggio was not listed in the cast as Bender.
• 35:53
  I'm like, what the for? And then I got the audition from
• 35:55
  my agency, which I'm like, why would they send me knowing how I
• 35:57
  feel? Why would they send me the an
• 35:59
  audition for Bender? So I texted John Sound, right?
• 36:02
  Just said hey, what the heck's up with Bender, bro?
• 36:05
  He's like, hey, look man, I have nothing to do with that.
• 36:07
  But if you want to spread some rumors, man, nothing's not going
• 36:10
  to stop you. So I literally messaged my my
• 36:13
  agent back and I said you can tell him to bite my shiny metal
• 36:16
  a because that's not cool what they're doing because clearly he
• 36:18
  wants to they're just not willing to pay him for it.
• 36:21
  And it it's not Futurama without Bender and it's not Bender
• 36:25
  without John DiMaggio he created that character.
• 36:27
  So I will not touch those jobs. I've had auditions for SpongeBob
• 36:30
  before I text up Tom. Kenny.
• 36:31
  Hey, do you know it's he's like, man, you take one vacation in 27
• 36:34
  years, John. But it was just temporary where
• 36:38
  I just, I don't take those jobs. I don't touch them.
• 36:40
  So I want to squash, squash that real quick.
• 36:42
  Despite what has been said, I am not actively trying to take the
• 36:45
  role of Peter Cullen or any other actor out there.
• 36:48
  I do the jobs if they can't and won't if they're sick.
• 36:51
  And there's been times like for the video game, John DiMaggio
• 36:53
  said I'm too busy, I cannot do this.
• 36:55
  You can recast Bender for the video game, I just can't.
• 36:58
  There's a conflict that happens, it really does.
• 37:01
  And it's probably because for a video game, they probably made
• 37:05
  maybe double scale at best, which is only like sixteen 1700
• 37:08
  bucks. And if he had a bigger job, the
• 37:12
  same thing happened with the Yosemite Sam.
• 37:13
  Maurice and Marsh used to do Yosemite Sam.
• 37:16
  He started doing the Lexus commercials.
• 37:18
  All of a sudden he's making way more money doing that and his
• 37:21
  schedule becomes a lot more busier because they need you to
• 37:23
  be available 24/7. If you're the voice for their
• 37:25
  brand and they said, well, you're going to come down and do
• 37:27
  Yosemite Sam on this schedule. And for this little money he's
• 37:29
  like I, if it comes down to this and this, I choose Lincoln.
• 37:32
  They say, OK, well, I guess we're recasting you.
• 37:34
  And they got Fred Tattershorn and said, which Fred's a great
• 37:36
  guy, but there was a reason why Maurice was like, well, I can't
• 37:39
  be a cartooning character anymore.
• 37:40
  Who would turn that down? Somebody's making a whole heck
• 37:42
  of a lot more money from a car commercial, that's who.
• 37:44
  So it just depends on priorities.
• 37:47
  But as a voice actor, don't make enemies in this business.
• 37:50
  You want to work with these people, not against these
• 37:53
  people. Don't make them think that
• 37:54
  you're coming for their jobs because they literally leverage
• 37:57
  us over guys like the the guys that we look up to, the guy, you
• 38:01
  know, you said you look up to me.
• 38:02
  I still look up to Maurice Lamarche and Rob Paulson and
• 38:05
  Keith David and all these amazing Kevin, Michael
• 38:07
  Richardson and Tara Strong and great Eli and all these big
• 38:10
  voice actors that are at the very top of their game.
• 38:13
  But I'm not going to go like, oh, this is the role for that,
• 38:15
  that good that guy does this voice.
• 38:16
  I'm going to try out for it. No, I'm not going to do that.
• 38:19
  I only do that is like, hey so And so's not feeling well or
• 38:22
  they're absent or they're in the hospital or they passed away.
• 38:25
  Would you be willing to submit? If there's a situation where
• 38:28
  they just can or won't, then I will submit.
• 38:30
  But otherwise, don't take other people's jobs because I have
• 38:33
  people literally tagged me. He's like, oh, look, this guy's
• 38:35
  doing an epic voice. He's coming after your dirt, and
• 38:38
  I'm just like, I'd send him to JK Simmons.
• 38:41
  Emoji was, like, serious. And then if they try to goad me
• 38:45
  like you never know, I'm going to, I'll just, I'll send him the
• 38:47
  emoji. Mark Hamilton, because you can
• 38:51
  try to come from my job. But here's the truth.
• 38:53
  The truth is, number one, I've spent a decade and 1/2
• 38:55
  solidifying my position in the industry where people know I'm
• 38:59
  really good at my job. I have the credits to back it
• 39:01
  up. I'm extremely fast.
• 39:03
  I get these guys done like that. They get an hour lunch when
• 39:06
  they're with me. They hire me for two hours.
• 39:07
  I'm done in 45 minutes. And you have to be fast and
• 39:10
  accurate because then they're going to want to rehire you over
• 39:12
  and over again. And then I don't even have to
• 39:14
  audition. There's like, hey, John, can you
• 39:15
  be in the studio this Thursday? We got some stuff for you to do.
• 39:17
  That's why you need to have training and know what you're
• 39:19
  doing before you go, because you don't even get a script at that
• 39:22
  point. They're just bring you into the
• 39:23
  studio. You have no idea what you're
• 39:24
  going to do. Do you imagine how scary that
• 39:26
  would be if you'd never done professional voice over work
• 39:28
  before? You have to be that good to be
• 39:29
  hired with no context, no nothing, and just know that you
• 39:32
  can do whatever they throw at you, no matter what it is.
• 39:35
  That is when you can be like, OK, now I know what I'm doing.
• 39:38
  Now I'm professional voice actor, I'm ready for anything.
• 39:41
  And you watch your career just take off, but don't get it
• 39:43
  deceitfully. Don't just sit around sitting on
• 39:46
  your hands waiting for jobs to come along because oh, I I
• 39:49
  booked one job. I guess I can just sit around
• 39:51
  waiting to be famous now and don't.
• 39:54
  And remember, your agent can't do everything for you.
• 39:57
  Most agencies, if you even have an agent with, by the way, I
• 40:00
  would say a good 3/4 of voice actors out there have no
• 40:02
  representation except for themselves.
• 40:04
  But if you do have an agent, they're an audition factory.
• 40:07
  Their only job is to get auditions, and they're not going
• 40:09
  to try to make good with a client.
• 40:11
  And take him out to dinner and be like, hey, I tell you who's
• 40:13
  great. Jon Bailey's awesome.
• 40:15
  You got to hire this guy. He's been on this.
• 40:16
  They're not doing that. You have to do that.
• 40:19
  That's why you have social media.
• 40:20
  That's why you take coaching classes.
• 40:22
  That's why you put yourself out there as many places as you can
• 40:24
  and come up with your own thing. I ever saw a guy who was not
• 40:27
  booking anything, started reading creepypastas.
• 40:30
  Next thing you know, he's getting booked all over the
• 40:32
  place and he's actually making tons of money off the stuff he's
• 40:34
  posting on YouTube that he came up with himself.
• 40:36
  But he's just reading creepypastas.
• 40:37
  So you just find your thing, find your niche.
• 40:41
  I have to say, like it's it's interesting to me, you know how
• 40:44
  that we're very, very different stages of our careers and like
• 40:47
  the it's exactly the same. I do this exactly the same thing
• 40:50
  you do every single day. Audition, audition, audition,
• 40:52
  audition, put stuff out there, put stuff out there.
• 40:54
  A lot of what you see me putting out there is auditions for
• 40:57
  things. Every once in a while, be like,
• 41:00
  hey, I'm actually in this thing, but it's the same thing.
• 41:03
  Just just a hint though, if it's under non disclosure again
• 41:06
  don't. Yeah, I.
• 41:07
  Know, I know. Auditions if it's like not a
• 41:10
  public casting. There was, there was there was
• 41:11
  one the other day. I can't remember what it was for
• 41:13
  but I spotted NDA and I was like Nope not putting out there.
• 41:17
  This is what I recommend. I don't recommend posting your
• 41:20
  actual auditions, because if people find out what you do,
• 41:24
  they're oh, that's good, I'll do that.
• 41:25
  It's no different than in comedy.
• 41:26
  You don't. Don't do your I've heard Bernie
• 41:29
  Mac and others saying that now that Katt Williams thing has
• 41:31
  come out, we're talking about always stand up comedians steal
• 41:34
  each other's jokes. Duh doy, duh doy.
• 41:38
  Like people on social media didn't know that.
• 41:39
  How many times have either of us done a thing first, and then a
• 41:42
  week later or even a couple of days later, sometimes the same
• 41:45
  day, somebody else will take that idea, do it, and get more
• 41:48
  views. And it was very obviously stolen
• 41:50
  from us, that's. Just human beings, though.
• 41:54
  Come on. Like that's if.
• 41:55
  You're taking something somebody else has done, and you're doing
• 41:57
  different. Do do it different or do it
• 41:59
  better. Don't do the exact same thing
• 42:00
  somebody else is doing because then it just looks like, oh man,
• 42:03
  you couldn't come up with anything on your own.
• 42:04
  So you just did something somebody else did.
• 42:06
  Do it, put your own spin on it. But yeah, just here's the thing
• 42:09
  I I I don't want anybody knowing what I know without paying for
• 42:14
  it. Well, that makes sense.
• 42:16
  I coach people because I have a decade and a half of experience
• 42:19
  and two years of research, development, and I've taken tons
• 42:21
  of coaching and tons of work classes or workshops.
• 42:24
  So I know what I'm talking about.
• 42:25
  I know how to get you booked. I'm not going to tell you by
• 42:28
  showing you for free on the Internet and social media posts
• 42:31
  or just telling you because you asked.
• 42:32
  Do you know how many times I get asked today?
• 42:34
  Hey, what can I do? I'm like, I coach.
• 42:36
  OK, thanks. They don't want to pay for it.
• 42:37
  That's all there is to it. And I even put it on a like,
• 42:40
  I'll give you 10 minutes, ask me whatever you want about voice
• 42:43
  over for 5 bucks off Fiverr. And people still want to come to
• 42:46
  me and ask me for free. So I just started giving the
• 42:48
  free answer go to I want to be a voice actor.com.
• 42:50
  Dee Bradley Baker made it really good.
• 42:52
  Pee, pee, pee. But I'm not going to tell you
• 42:53
  how to book and show you how to audition because you didn't pay
• 42:55
  for it. You really want to know?
• 42:57
  You want to take this seriously? You have to freaking put in the
• 42:59
  money. We all invested in our careers.
• 43:01
  We put in the money to learn from the best.
• 43:03
  You should do it too. In fact, if anything, I'm more
• 43:05
  affordable than the best people that I learned from.
• 43:07
  So you're getting a deal. I don't do coaching where you
• 43:10
  have to come back over and over and over and over and over
• 43:12
  again. You can, if you want to, just
• 43:13
  continuously get better. But I try to teach you
• 43:15
  everything you need to know. And 1/2 hour session, 500 bucks,
• 43:19
  which most people $250 is a really low rate per hour for
• 43:22
  voice over coaching. Don't have to do the full 2
• 43:24
  hours together, but in that two hours, I guarantee you will need
• 43:27
  a whole lot less coaching from other people.
• 43:29
  You will not need to come back over and over and over again.
• 43:30
  I'll teach you exactly what you need to know, but people are
• 43:33
  unwilling to do that. Too many people are they.
• 43:35
  They build up a certain brand for themselves on social media
• 43:38
  where they have a certain amount of followers or enough people
• 43:40
  go, you have a cool voice. You should do this.
• 43:42
  They're not casting. You don't know who they are.
• 43:43
  Those are random people on the Internet kissing your butt.
• 43:45
  You need honest, unbiased opinions of how good an actor
• 43:49
  you are, not how great your voice is or anything else.
• 43:51
  So get freaking coaching. And by the way, they do a lot of
• 43:54
  it on the Internet. You don't have to be in LA or be
• 43:55
  in Atlanta or be in New York. You can do it over.
• 43:57
  Zoom. You can do it over Skype.
• 43:59
  You can do it over Google. Meet UPS or whatever they call
• 44:01
  it now probably can do it over freaking Tender for all I know.
• 44:04
  I have no idea. They probably have grinder
• 44:06
  meetings now. I mean I think a little bit
• 44:09
  comes down to like the commitment as as you mentioned
• 44:12
  like people being willing versus not being willing to to put the
• 44:14
  time and the effort in I. Mean.
• 44:16
  They want it for free, to be honest.
• 44:17
  They want everything. They want all that we have
• 44:19
  without putting the work into it, which is kind of the human
• 44:21
  way. But I'm just one of those
• 44:23
  people. Like, I freaking work.
• 44:24
  I love the work. I put in the work because I know
• 44:27
  I'm good at it. I know that it's beneficial for
• 44:28
  me, and I know it's going to help me book even more.
• 44:30
  So I'm freaking down. One thing I I got to ask you
• 44:33
  about though is that like has it gone?
• 44:36
  Obviously you're still grinding like crazy now, but like have
• 44:39
  the bigger jobs that you've landed at least helped you
• 44:43
  somewhat in in getting like more jobs because as you mentioned.
• 44:46
  That's what I was talking about earlier.
• 44:47
  It's the word of mouth, because when I got in with Marvel, at
• 44:50
  first it was a little tiny bit. It was just a crack in the door.
• 44:53
  And same thing with Transformers.
• 44:54
  I just started. I was like, I just started
• 44:56
  showing them exactly how good I was.
• 44:58
  I was entertaining without overdoing it.
• 45:00
  I didn't constantly interrupt and throw a bunch of other funny
• 45:02
  voices. It you kind of get the feel for
• 45:04
  the the clients as you're working with them to know if
• 45:08
  they're like, you know, strict guidelines, let's just do the
• 45:10
  job and go. Or if they're just every once in
• 45:12
  a while there's a little funny something to throw in or
• 45:13
  whatever. But I always try to throw extra
• 45:16
  stuff in. Like if I'm there to do Ryan
• 45:18
  Reynolds voice for a Deadpool thing, for example, and I'm
• 45:21
  doing all brown pants Maxim and Maxim and all of a sudden, oh,
• 45:24
  yes, we know each other. We're friends from work.
• 45:26
  And I'm like, oh crap, what was that?
• 45:27
  And I was like, oh, yeah, I know that guy.
• 45:28
  I need his leg though. No, really, I need it.
• 45:29
  All of a sudden, you know, I'm booking stuff for those guys too
• 45:32
  because I'm just you. You look for a way to do an Audi
• 45:35
  audible resume because they don't know what you've been
• 45:37
  there for. Usually by the time you get
• 45:38
  cast, the people that got that got you there are not even in
• 45:41
  the room anymore. Sometimes they will be.
• 45:44
  Sometimes like, hey, we loved your audition.
• 45:45
  You know that that person actually heard it will be there.
• 45:48
  But most of the times it went from one person who's listening
• 45:50
  to audition, OK, I think I like this guy and this guy and this
• 45:52
  guy, and they wheel it down to this guy and then they send him
• 45:55
  over to the client. And then I have a completely
• 45:57
  different experience with the client than I did with because I
• 45:59
  don't even know the person that got me the job from the
• 46:01
  audition. So this is my chance to show
• 46:04
  them what I'm capable of. So if you, if you think it's
• 46:07
  kind of like Eminem, if you only had one shot, you know what I
• 46:09
  mean? Because you don't know if you're
• 46:10
  going to have another session with them and you can do more
• 46:12
  later on. You have to be bold, but you
• 46:14
  don't want to overdo it. That's that's the real balance,
• 46:17
  is you have to be strong enough and bold enough to be like, OK,
• 46:20
  I don't want to scare them away and run them off because I'm
• 46:23
  like, oh, look at me, look at me, look what I can do.
• 46:25
  Don't do that, but make it subtle.
• 46:27
  Sprinkle it in like you're just putting a little salt on your
• 46:29
  food. And every once in a while, when
• 46:30
  you see a little opening, there's a dead spot.
• 46:32
  Nobody else is talking. They're not whatever.
• 46:34
  And you see little fun, funny things like, oh, look at that
• 46:36
  guy, he's got some nice brown pants and all of a sudden
• 46:39
  everybody's cracking up and laughing, all right, moving on
• 46:41
  those little seeds. And like, man, you know who he's
• 46:43
  really good at. He also should be the next thing
• 46:45
  you know, I'm not doing the auditions.
• 46:46
  I'm getting directly cast back or I'm getting cast like so.
• 46:50
  And so it's such and such worked with you.
• 46:51
  And they said you were fantastic, that you got done
• 46:53
  really good, really fast and you were really good.
• 46:55
  We got this all other project and then all of a sudden all
• 46:58
  departments like, hey, have you heard of John Bailey?
• 46:59
  This guy's awesome. And then I've got a permanent
• 47:03
  client. I may not have a regular weekly
• 47:04
  job, but I'm constantly getting a new stream of gigs from them.
• 47:07
  And then word just finally gets around and around.
• 47:09
  Here's a great example before you move.
• 47:10
  I know I can see a question boiling, but I got a really cool
• 47:12
  story that was not not expecting First is a little disheartening,
• 47:17
  but then I started realized it made me help me understand.
• 47:19
  I've been working for Transformers for eight years
• 47:21
  now, doing professional stuff for them.
• 47:23
  And in one of my last sessions, one of the ladies was like, oh,
• 47:26
  hey, I'm actually from Hasbro and I.
• 47:29
  We really liked your audition. I was like, yeah, I've worked
• 47:31
  for you guys for eight years. She's like, really?
• 47:33
  I don't. I never heard you.
• 47:34
  So I was like 8 years and Hasbro's never officially heard.
• 47:39
  But I beg to differ so. I started doing I started doing
• 47:42
  a few voices and naming a few of the She's like oh I know exactly
• 47:45
  who are. I have heard you you were oh man
• 47:47
  you're really good. And all of a sudden it's like
• 47:50
  you know I'm she's like she's the one that gave me the idea
• 47:52
  she's like you should put together a reel.
• 47:54
  Like, not not a demo, but a reel.
• 47:57
  And there's a difference between a demo and a reel.
• 47:58
  And some people in the business get those two things confused
• 48:00
  because some people think a reel and demo are the same thing.
• 48:03
  What I mean by reel is more what an actor does, a visual
• 48:06
  representation with audio of little clips of things that
• 48:08
  you've done a lot of, a lot of on camera actors do these acting
• 48:11
  reels, but it's not the same thing as a voice over demo.
• 48:14
  That's just a little clip of audio.
• 48:15
  It has to be a specific, specific amount of seconds,
• 48:18
  minute, whatever. And this is different.
• 48:20
  So I try to compile like all the Optimus Prime stuff and then all
• 48:24
  the Megatron and then all the Starscream and all.
• 48:25
  And then I put and I ended up having like 2 1/2 minutes worth
• 48:28
  of stuff and now I have something I can actually send.
• 48:30
  When they say hey, can you do there you go, boom, done.
• 48:33
  Already, already finished. Just listen to this scan through
• 48:36
  because and you know what my favorite part of the story is?
• 48:39
  When I was working on Bumblebee movie and I knew there were
• 48:41
  other roles because I had gotten auditions from my agency that
• 48:44
  didn't go anywhere. They had they had auditioned me
• 48:46
  twice or they they said there was some kind of weird back and
• 48:48
  forth and they had sent me 5 characters and they said pick
• 48:51
  three and I said forget you, Oh my God, he says Transformers,
• 48:55
  I'm not stupid even though it didn't say Transformers.
• 48:57
  I'm like I know who Starscream is like you should have put the
• 48:59
  names if you didn't want me to know what this was.
• 49:01
  So I get it twice. So I ended up doing 3030 takes
• 49:06
  were the same to groups of auditions twice because
• 49:09
  sometimes it was like give us one take that's as close to the
• 49:11
  original voice as possible and then give your own unique spins
• 49:13
  on it, which they didn't do. They went with all like original
• 49:15
  sound, alike voices. But originally Starscream had a
• 49:18
  line, Iron had a line. There was other lines in the in
• 49:20
  the film that got cut. And so I'd audition for all of
• 49:24
  them. But then crickets.
• 49:25
  I'm like, OK, well I can sleep at night knowing I gave it a
• 49:27
  shot. When I went in to record for
• 49:28
  Optimus, she came out. She's like, oh, by the way, we
• 49:30
  have these other characters, Can you just let let us know which
• 49:33
  ones you've booked before? That is the world's worst
• 49:36
  statement. When you're a guy like me who
• 49:38
  had only booked Optimus Prime and only Optimus Prime and none
• 49:41
  of the other characters yet, because I was still early in my
• 49:43
  career that made me realize that I needed exactly what I have
• 49:46
  now. I need to show everybody all the
• 49:48
  stuff that I've done. Now that I've got a resume, I'm
• 49:50
  I can be, I can Cause Steve Bloom was sitting right next to
• 49:53
  me and he's been star screaming Shockwave and just the list.
• 49:56
  And he was going down the clipboard going done it, done
• 49:58
  it, done it, didn't do it, done it, done it, done it didn't do
• 50:00
  it. There's only like 2 guys he
• 50:01
  hadn't done yet. I'm like, crap, I'm screwed.
• 50:05
  So when I went in to audition, I just had to speak up again about
• 50:08
  the boldness. I said would you mind if I read
• 50:10
  for some of these other characters?
• 50:11
  Because I've been doing these voices for 35 years and I'm
• 50:13
  pretty Dang good at him. He's like, oh, you want to give
• 50:15
  him after the second one? He's like, John, you're blowing
• 50:17
  my freaking mind. You sound just like him.
• 50:19
  I was like, keep going. He's like, yes, keep going after
• 50:22
  the 5th or 6th when he was like, OK, I think we've got enough.
• 50:25
  But yeah, so I did 6 extras and ended up booking Shockwave and
• 50:28
  Soundwave over Steve Bloom, who's been the voice of
• 50:32
  Shockwave before and the Fall of Cybertron series.
• 50:36
  So yeah, and he ended up getting Wheel Jack, which only had, you
• 50:39
  know, there's too many of them. And I got to be my two favorite
• 50:42
  characters. So it does.
• 50:43
  Fortune favors the bubble man. And now that I have a R.E.M., A
• 50:46
  demo and a resume list, I can be the Steve Bloom when I go into a
• 50:50
  session and be like, Dun it, Dun it, Dun it, Dun it.
• 50:53
  So yeah, you you have to do anyways.
• 50:56
  You see my point? I do.
• 50:57
  I do. Thanks for sharing.
• 51:00
  I mean, to be honest, I was aware of like the kind of the
• 51:02
  sound, the like concept. I think that probably the first
• 51:05
  time I'd ever heard of that was when there was the the More Than
• 51:09
  Freeman thing, where it was like a a white dude doing Morgan
• 51:13
  Freeman's voice and I. Was like, yeah.
• 51:15
  Pretty. Close.
• 51:15
  I can't say, I can't say his name, but there was a guy that
• 51:20
  I'm friends with that's a very established professional voice
• 51:22
  actor. He's no longer working, but he
• 51:24
  got sued because he took a job doing Morgan Freeman's voice and
• 51:28
  actually saying my name is Morgan Freeman and I approve
• 51:31
  this message and you can't do that.
• 51:32
  That's a big, big OH. My God.
• 51:34
  Big legal. No, no, no.
• 51:36
  And it was on a political ad. So yeah.
• 51:38
  And Morgan Freeman's like, no, he is.
• 51:40
  I'm friends with Frank Caliendo from Mad TV.
• 51:42
  We became friends over TikTok and he's like Morgan Freeman is
• 51:45
  does not play. He will not let you do his
• 51:48
  voice. He has people literally paid on
• 51:50
  the watch for people trying to rip off his voice by doing an
• 51:53
  impression to do other stuff. And he would get stuff just
• 51:56
  hacked instantly, like immediate takedowns.
• 51:59
  Even if it's just saying silly on social media.
• 52:01
  Not social media stuff, but anything official.
• 52:03
  Official. Because I, Frank and I talked
• 52:05
  about like, you ever had any, But he's like, Oh yeah, I've had
• 52:06
  problems with Morgan Freeman before and like, interesting he
• 52:09
  is. He's on it, though.
• 52:12
  I get it to some extent. Like, I mean, if if someone
• 52:14
  would go out and just replicate my voice, I'd be pissed off.
• 52:16
  Like if it's, not if. It's not involved.
• 52:18
  Especially if it's on a yeah, especially if it's on a real
• 52:20
  thing and and somebody got paid to do it and it wasn't me.
• 52:23
  Yeah, that that's bull crap. But I mean, I I've actually had
• 52:26
  people that like message me five years after a thing happened.
• 52:30
  They're like, hey, I just, I felt bad about this for like 5
• 52:33
  years. But I wanted to let you know
• 52:34
  that I got this audition. They said they were looking for
• 52:36
  an epic voice and they literally used a reference of your voice
• 52:39
  from Honest Trailers. And I'll admit that I did the
• 52:41
  audition. I'm I'm like and I'm waiting for
• 52:44
  the bad news. He's like, you're not mad.
• 52:47
  I'm like do you know what I do for a living, man?
• 52:48
  I'm feeling for people all the time.
• 52:49
  I don't give a crap if they're putting.
• 52:50
  They could hire me if they want to, but it happens.
• 52:53
  That's part of the job that that's for sound alike.
• 52:55
  They look for people that do similar stuff because they
• 52:57
  either think they can't afford you, or can they can't find you,
• 52:59
  or some bull crap, or they just want to do it for somebody who
• 53:02
  probably will do it for cheaper. That's the thing, isn't it?
• 53:05
  There's a but there's a big difference between like we want
• 53:07
  someone who sounds exactly like this but so we want this but
• 53:10
  we're not willing to pay them. So we're going to go for the
• 53:12
  next best thing or using it as an actual reference point like
• 53:17
  I'll give you an example, I I auditioned for something the
• 53:18
  other day that was the NDA thing.
• 53:21
  So, OK, something. They used the GTA3 radio
• 53:26
  stations thing as like a reference.
• 53:29
  And I was looking through all the voices and I was like, Oh
• 53:31
  yeah, I know what they're going with this advert, these
• 53:33
  characters. So I threw a bunch of different
• 53:35
  voices there. I auditioned for all of them.
• 53:37
  I was only going to go for one and I looked for them.
• 53:38
  I was like, no, I'm going to go for every single one of these.
• 53:41
  But I didn't like, do exactly what I remember from GTA3
• 53:45
  because that would just be complicated.
• 53:47
  Yeah, it would just, but you get.
• 53:50
  You use it as exactly what a reference is as a a starting off
• 53:54
  point. If they don't know, you can get
• 53:57
  away with it. I was working on a video game.
• 54:00
  This is a true story. I was working on a video game
• 54:03
  and she starts describing this character.
• 54:05
  She starts saying he's white, his his hair is buzzed.
• 54:09
  He's definitely got an addiction problem.
• 54:13
  And I was literally like, you're that's just Jesse Pinkman.
• 54:16
  You're literally describing Jesse Pinkman.
• 54:19
  So guess what voice that I gave him?
• 54:21
  Y'all the whole game. And she never noticed the
• 54:25
  engineer every time. This is the funniest part.
• 54:27
  It got down and the game got cancelled, which means I got
• 54:29
  paid, but it never came out. No big deal.
• 54:30
  But that had nothing to do with my performance.
• 54:32
  Just so you know, this is not the reason why I got cancelled,
• 54:35
  but so I can feel like I can talk about.
• 54:37
  I'm not going to say what the game was still, but I I feel
• 54:38
  like I can tell the story. So the engineer, every time they
• 54:41
  got to a part because you know, like in Breath of the Wild, you
• 54:43
  can go and make recipes and cook stuff.
• 54:44
  There's literally a section in that game where you could cook.
• 54:47
  So I was like, yeah, we got to cook and the engineers like
• 54:51
  trying so hard not to laugh and the and the casting director's
• 54:53
  just loving it. And I'm like, man, this is just
• 54:55
  too freaking easy. I just got to do Aaron Paul the
• 54:57
  whole time. Tell me you said like science
• 55:01
  bitch like that I didn't. Say science.
• 55:03
  I was like, yeah, no, I think. I think what I did was when I
• 55:05
  was cooking, I was like, yeah, recipes like it was, it was
• 55:10
  still science when it was just a different word.
• 55:13
  Oh my God. Like I said, and here's another
• 55:16
  thing that people this is a freebie.
• 55:17
  So normally I charge for this information.
• 55:19
  Bad impressions make great characters.
• 55:21
  This is like common knowledge. People think they have to be
• 55:23
  accurate. No, be the exact opposite of
• 55:26
  accurate and you can just claim that voice for yourself and say,
• 55:28
  oh, I came up with that. That's not Jesse Pittman.
• 55:30
  That's just that's Johnny Storm the hanger.
• 55:37
  I once heard dude from Frasier that his name escapes me.
• 55:43
  He played Sasha, Bob, Kelsey. Grammar.
• 55:46
  Kelsey Grammar, thank you. Yes.
• 55:47
  Kelsey Grammar said in an interview that the inspiration
• 55:50
  for the Sasha Bob character came from like, like a someone he'd
• 55:54
  lived with or worked with years before and he'd like saved the
• 55:58
  voice and used it later. And I've done the same.
• 56:01
  I've I've I've got a landlord from hell that I had that I'm
• 56:04
  saving his voice for something I don't I don't know what it's.
• 56:06
  Going to be. We all got those voices.
• 56:08
  We're like, oh, I'm totally stealing that voice news.
• 56:11
  And it's like you're just waiting for the moment.
• 56:13
  And I just, I just find that brilliant.
• 56:14
  But he was like, oh, I'm going to use this voice.
• 56:16
  And I think that's a better thing because like you mentioned
• 56:18
  earlier, build a Bank of voices, build like and I've got my go to
• 56:22
  don't share them. Don't post those on the
• 56:23
  Internet. Don't share them with other
• 56:25
  people. Because just like in comedy,
• 56:26
  people will be like, oh, that's a great voice.
• 56:28
  I'm totally going to use that voice later on.
• 56:30
  And I have. Before I was like, oh, that's a
• 56:32
  good voice, voice. I can do that.
• 56:34
  That's chicky though, isn't it? Because like the.
• 56:36
  Story actually reminded me of the How was it that was?
• 56:39
  Who were you just talking about? Kelsey Grammar.
• 56:42
  Kelsey Grammar. Yeah.
• 56:43
  OK, so Simpsons, Hank, Azaria. 90% of those voices are people
• 56:47
  he went to college with. The Comic Book Guy was literally
• 56:51
  his his guy that lived in the the, the the dorm room right
• 56:55
  next. I I would just love this idea
• 56:56
  that someone's just sitting. Down on my list, he actually
• 57:00
  said those words. Could you imagine?
• 57:01
  You just sit there and you tune in and then you're like, wait a
• 57:04
  minute, that's my voice. I'm, I'm suing.
• 57:07
  What what? What show ever like?
• 57:13
  I I actually have a friend who had a very unique voice.
• 57:15
  And I find I was like, dude, I'm gonna book that voice one of
• 57:17
  these days. And I finally did.
• 57:19
  And I said he's like, dude, my voice is in a cartoon.
• 57:21
  He's like freaking out. He's like, I'm gonna show all
• 57:23
  my, I'm gonna show all my friends.
• 57:26
  That's sick, man. That's cool.
• 57:29
  I just, yeah, I mean it. It inspiration comes from
• 57:31
  everywhere, doesn't it? And that that's that's the
• 57:33
  reality. I think of voice acting for the
• 57:34
  most part is you got to build from.
• 57:36
  Much like on screen acting, when you build a character, it comes
• 57:39
  from real life you have to base on.
• 57:40
  Something you have to build. That way it's easier to hang on
• 57:42
  to because if you if you don't have something fully fleshed out
• 57:45
  and created in your brain, you're going to be so you're
• 57:47
  going to be straying off. And I've had that happen a few
• 57:51
  times where I I would get my, my Cockney accent would start to
• 57:56
  send a little Australian or vice versa or something like or New
• 57:59
  Zealand and Australia would kind of start sounding too.
• 58:01
  So. So it's like, yeah, you have to
• 58:03
  really know what you know. So sometimes when I have to do a
• 58:05
  specific accent, for example for New Zealand, I'll just do Reese
• 58:08
  Darby instead instead of actually trying to do a New
• 58:10
  Zealand accent, I'll just just, you know, grab into that
• 58:14
  character to make sure I got the accent all legit.
• 58:17
  It's like they don't have to know.
• 58:19
  That's Reese Darby. That's just how I do the new use
• 58:21
  England. Accent I I can just follow the.
• 58:23
  Pitch up in there, you. Know there's there's certain
• 58:25
  like I struggle with Australia and I've I've not really
• 58:28
  mastered that one yet and I know that and this actually lists my
• 58:31
  next question like so basically the question is like how do you
• 58:34
  approach building a voice. And I often great question.
• 58:38
  I often find it's like you've got to like have a starting
• 58:41
  point, as you mentioned, maybe a particular character, maybe a
• 58:43
  particular person, and then you build it stage by stage from
• 58:46
  there. But what's your process for
• 58:47
  that? I'll I'll elaborate on what you
• 58:49
  just said, quite literally what you said, but think of it this
• 58:51
  way. This is the best way that I
• 58:52
  learned to teach. And like I said, this is stuff.
• 58:54
  So it's normally things that I charge people for, but this one
• 58:56
  I'll give you for free. So it's a video game.
• 58:59
  You're at the very beginning of GTA, right?
• 59:01
  And you're starting off with a blank slate character to create
• 59:04
  your custom character, correct? It's just you.
• 59:06
  You start out, you are the character you start with.
• 59:09
  So I start every character with myself.
• 59:10
  This is my natural voice. This is layer one, this is the
• 59:14
  foundation. And then the next layer would be
• 59:16
  the pitch. Is it lower or is it higher?
• 59:18
  And then the next layer would be a physical thing or an accent or
• 59:21
  whatever. Each one of those is layer.
• 59:22
  It's just like custom character creation and every video game
• 59:26
  where you're like, I want to change their eyes to blue, I
• 59:27
  want to give them a purple Mohawk.
• 59:29
  I want to change their skin color to this.
• 59:30
  I want to give them this kind of outfit.
• 59:32
  All of a sudden they have. They look different when they
• 59:34
  have a mustache or a goatee compared to with no official.
• 59:36
  All of a sudden, you're literally building this
• 59:37
  character in your mind from scratch.
• 59:39
  That's why I call voice actors master builders, because we have
• 59:42
  this giant box of Legos with every job and every audition we
• 59:45
  get, and it's our job to put together and nobody's going to
• 59:47
  make the exact same thing. And whoever makes the most
• 59:49
  interesting thing and shows how well they do it and does it in a
• 59:52
  quick way, that's usually the person that ends up getting the
• 59:55
  job. So yeah, I I feel like that
• 59:56
  visual representation helps people a lot better understand
• 59:59
  exactly what it is. It's literally just tacking
• 1:00:01
  things on to what you already have.
• 1:00:02
  So you always start with yourself and then you build on
• 1:00:04
  until you come up with something completely different.
• 1:00:07
  And what helps with that, that a lot of people don't think about,
• 1:00:10
  is the description. It's not just the voice
• 1:00:12
  description. Oh, we need a male 30 to 40,
• 1:00:15
  blah blah blah, Read the other stuff.
• 1:00:16
  Oh, this guy lives on a dry desert planet.
• 1:00:19
  Oh, that actually changes everything now, doesn't it?
• 1:00:21
  That's not in the voice description.
• 1:00:23
  That was in the background bio stuff all of a sudden.
• 1:00:25
  I don't know about you, but if I sucked sand every day, my voice
• 1:00:28
  would probably be pretty messed up.
• 1:00:30
  I'm just living on this planet for so long I probably couldn't
• 1:00:32
  breathe worth crap. So all of sudden that adds a
• 1:00:35
  thing that, you know, oh crap, I didn't even, 'cause, I don't
• 1:00:37
  know, nice plush, happy voice. And I'm sucking sand and dust
• 1:00:41
  all day long. No way that's going to sound
• 1:00:42
  like that. So yeah, you have to think about
• 1:00:44
  that. And that was another good 11
• 1:00:45
  recently I had where it said the planet's been irradiated and I
• 1:00:49
  was like, oh, so these people are all suffering from radiation
• 1:00:52
  sickness, So there should be coughing.
• 1:00:53
  There should be other stuff that was not mentioned in the voice
• 1:00:55
  description part. And I'm like, oh, so I should
• 1:00:57
  be. I should be more like, so you
• 1:00:59
  got any, You know, all of a sudden that became a whole
• 1:01:02
  thing. And it sounds way more
• 1:01:04
  believable and realistic if you're on a radiated planet than
• 1:01:07
  if you just lived on regular old happy Earth that's only slightly
• 1:01:10
  radiated. It's like breeding between the
• 1:01:12
  lines, really, like looking, at least not said.
• 1:01:14
  Because some people just read the the just the voice
• 1:01:17
  description part and or they don't even read that they just
• 1:01:19
  go straight to the lines and start doing it.
• 1:01:21
  And 90% of the people out there read exactly what's written and
• 1:01:24
  don't read all the extra and they just they just read it and
• 1:01:27
  they don't get the job and nobody should be shocked because
• 1:01:31
  they didn't do they didn't do anything.
• 1:01:33
  You read it out loud for you just go through the steps.
• 1:01:35
  I coach all the stuff. You read it out loud, You go
• 1:01:37
  through all the descriptions, you look for little hints that
• 1:01:39
  might change the way the character sounds or acts.
• 1:01:41
  So there's a lot of little stuff in there that you just got to be
• 1:01:43
  you got to be a good detective and use your microscope
• 1:01:46
  magnifying glass thing to to to see the little details that can
• 1:01:49
  change your character. Make it different than what
• 1:01:51
  everybody else because that will set you apart from everybody
• 1:01:53
  else. All of a sudden, like, oh number
• 1:01:55
  one, they're going to respect you for paying attention to the
• 1:01:58
  script and actually reading it because they're going to skip
• 1:02:00
  through the be like, oh, they didn't even freaking, they
• 1:02:02
  didn't read it. They can tell right away.
• 1:02:06
  Given that your voice is like you know your your most valuable
• 1:02:10
  asset as a voice actor, like have you have you insured your
• 1:02:13
  voice? There's OK, so I've heard this
• 1:02:15
  question before and most people don't realize this.
• 1:02:18
  There's only one company in the world that that does voice
• 1:02:21
  insurance, and it's over where you are.
• 1:02:23
  It's in the UK and it's insanely expensive.
• 1:02:26
  So no, most of us will never be able to afford for voice
• 1:02:31
  insurance. It's not like these rich white
• 1:02:34
  ladies on TV. They're like, oh, I had my legs
• 1:02:36
  and my butt insured for like $10 million just in case.
• 1:02:41
  No, I we don't have that. We just have to be very careful.
• 1:02:43
  Take zinc gargle, lukewarm saltwater, not go to ball games,
• 1:02:47
  not go to concerts, not do anything where you yell, not go
• 1:02:49
  to bars, any place you have to raise your voice.
• 1:02:51
  We're like, the only thing I do is karaoke.
• 1:02:54
  It has a microphone. I don't have to kill myself.
• 1:02:56
  It's interesting that you say that because like, OK, like, I'm
• 1:02:59
  not like a professional voice actor in the sense it's not like
• 1:03:02
  my main thing. It's I I do acting, voice
• 1:03:04
  acting. I do music, podcast.
• 1:03:09
  I'm trying. Semantics again, I'm.
• 1:03:10
  Trying again, I I would go with amateur because I've been paid
• 1:03:15
  but. It's not over amateur though,
• 1:03:17
  because novice at least that sounds like you're doing it and
• 1:03:20
  you're getting paid for it. Amateur sounds like you've never
• 1:03:21
  done it and you have no idea what you're doing.
• 1:03:23
  We'll go to Nova stuff. You're better than amateur.
• 1:03:25
  You're not an amateur. But in a case like it's I
• 1:03:29
  actually found. An amateur would be using a
• 1:03:31
  stage mic without a pop filter right now and no headphones.
• 1:03:35
  Fair enough. Yeah.
• 1:03:38
  When I've. Oh my God, when I've.
• 1:03:40
  I saw it. Or they'd be holding their,
• 1:03:41
  they'd be holding straw hat, Goofy style home their their
• 1:03:45
  earphone coordinator. So what's it like being a voice
• 1:03:46
  actor? So what's it like working with
• 1:03:48
  and was it like working with so and so?
• 1:03:50
  How do you like so and so? I hate those little mics so much
• 1:03:53
  when the when the person goes out and interviews someone and
• 1:03:56
  it's a tiny little mic and it's like and then the questions
• 1:03:58
  always dead. I've been in the situations
• 1:04:01
  before too, where that's. OK, worst worst question you've
• 1:04:03
  ever been asked. Come.
• 1:04:03
  On What's it Like? That's it.
• 1:04:05
  What's it like working with someone who cares?
• 1:04:06
  You're here to interview me? Oh yeah, that's a good.
• 1:04:09
  Question. Talk to them about how Talk to
• 1:04:11
  them about. It was like working with me,
• 1:04:13
  bro. I'm the star here.
• 1:04:15
  Come. On voice actor Do you see who I
• 1:04:17
  work with? Nobody.
• 1:04:18
  They're not here. We're in the same thing.
• 1:04:21
  We're never together. What?
• 1:04:23
  What did I want to ask you about earlier?
• 1:04:25
  About just go back to the sound alike thing?
• 1:04:27
  Obviously, you mentioned that you have like a really good
• 1:04:29
  relationship with a lot of other voice actors and that that the
• 1:04:32
  whole industry is kind of built on, on respect.
• 1:04:34
  And like, yeah, it's just professionalism.
• 1:04:36
  It's like you want to make friends.
• 1:04:38
  Yeah, you don't want to make you don't want to make problems with
• 1:04:40
  the people that are at the especially the people that can
• 1:04:43
  influence whether or not you get hired or not.
• 1:04:45
  Because here's what here's a plausible scenario.
• 1:04:48
  You're in a there's a situation that you've been booked for and
• 1:04:52
  you're new and it's a group record, or even if it's a solo
• 1:04:55
  record, they still talk. They're not just there doing the
• 1:04:58
  job and then they leave. Those people are human beings
• 1:05:01
  with a with a with opinions, and if you give them a bad opinion
• 1:05:05
  of you, then they're going to be verbal about that.
• 1:05:07
  So let's just say I've been cast for a thing and there's a group
• 1:05:10
  record and it's Tara Strong and Fred Tattershaw.
• 1:05:12
  And it's it's the biggest of the bigs.
• 1:05:15
  And they hear, oh, John Bailey's coming.
• 1:05:16
  Oh, John Bailey, that guy's you. Don't you want that?
• 1:05:19
  You don't. You don't know about John
• 1:05:21
  Bailey, do you? Yeah.
• 1:05:22
  You should never have cast you. Know, Yeah, that'll be the
• 1:05:24
  worst. That and that, right?
• 1:05:26
  That has happened. And people have gotten
• 1:05:28
  blacklisted for years. For years, they couldn't get any
• 1:05:32
  work because they had a bad reputation because they said a
• 1:05:34
  thing or did a thing one time or they had some unusual
• 1:05:37
  interaction or they went behind somebody's actor's back and took
• 1:05:40
  a job from him. And all of a sudden that
• 1:05:42
  instantly puts you on the radar. You don't want to make enemies
• 1:05:45
  out of these guys because studios, like I said, studios
• 1:05:47
  will use us as leverage to try to go.
• 1:05:49
  This came from the horse's mouth.
• 1:05:50
  I've actually heard that this really happened to a famous
• 1:05:53
  voice actor friend of mine where he went in and said you're going
• 1:05:55
  to do the job for this rate. And he's like, what?
• 1:05:57
  Why? He's like, well, either that or
• 1:05:58
  we'll get somebody like John Bailey to do it for that rate
• 1:06:00
  because they will. They're using us as a weapon.
• 1:06:03
  They're making us an ammunition against our favorite voice
• 1:06:06
  actors to try to get them to take less money.
• 1:06:09
  That's not cool with me. So if the rest of us would stick
• 1:06:11
  up for ourselves and say, no, freaking give it to him, he
• 1:06:14
  deserves it. He's already the voice.
• 1:06:16
  Instead of being like, yeah, I want it, give it to me so I can
• 1:06:18
  become famous too. That's how you get the
• 1:06:19
  reputation where those guys will not want to work with you
• 1:06:21
  anymore because they're going to know that you're a scummy little
• 1:06:23
  Leech who's just willing to take any job just to be a famous
• 1:06:26
  voice actor or to be a voice actor or just to pay the bills
• 1:06:29
  or whatever. There's other ways to pay bills
• 1:06:30
  without stealing jobs. This voiceover industry is
• 1:06:32
  freaking huge. There's way more jobs out there
• 1:06:35
  than taking one from another actor, by the way.
• 1:06:37
  It'll take you a long time just to get to the point where you'd
• 1:06:39
  even get an offer to be the voice that those guys are doing.
• 1:06:42
  So don't get your hopes up that that's going to happen right
• 1:06:44
  away if you're if you're new at this.
• 1:06:47
  What I want to ask you about just on top of that was like
• 1:06:50
  obviously you mentioned, you know, you'd sometimes do voices
• 1:06:52
  for like say Brian Reynolds. So I would assume that you have
• 1:06:55
  like a sort of a working relationship with him and then.
• 1:06:58
  I mean, we know each other on social media, but as far as
• 1:07:00
  interaction goes, come on, he's a big alias.
• 1:07:03
  Well, I don't think it's unreasonable to say you.
• 1:07:05
  I mean, you you mentioned one time you named Mark Ruffalo and
• 1:07:08
  you're like, yeah, we're friends and I'm like, OK.
• 1:07:09
  Oh, I'm not friends with Margolo.
• 1:07:10
  We we met one time. That was cool.
• 1:07:12
  OK, well, and now I can. I can officially say I worked
• 1:07:15
  with Mark Ruffalo because, well, there you go.
• 1:07:17
  That's that's that's more do you mean I only know him as a guy on
• 1:07:20
  the screen so in a sphere of. Connections.
• 1:07:23
  He talked to my ex-wife over the phone, which was kind of.
• 1:07:26
  It was really funny though, because she was actually
• 1:07:27
  watching one of his films when he talks the odds of that
• 1:07:31
  happening. So he's, he looked at me, he's
• 1:07:33
  like, oh, you're watching 13 going on 30.
• 1:07:35
  That's funny because I was in that movie.
• 1:07:36
  This is Mark Ruffalo. And then I heard her scream and
• 1:07:40
  he goes, oh crap, she's like, I thought you were pulling a prank
• 1:07:44
  on me the whole time. I was like, sure it is OK.
• 1:07:46
  I'm like, I don't do a good marker of a that was really.
• 1:07:50
  Him. Oh, man, I would die.
• 1:07:53
  What? I feel like I feel like Ryan and
• 1:07:55
  I are are cool, but he his social media stopped following
• 1:07:59
  me. I don't know if that was
• 1:08:00
  something I did or not, but I did.
• 1:08:02
  At one point I mess. I messaged Maxima.
• 1:08:04
  If I ever say, hey, if I did something wrong because Ryan's
• 1:08:06
  account and followed mine, I wasn't even sure if he's in
• 1:08:07
  charge of his own account. I I know that they.
• 1:08:11
  I know that when they have a social media manager come
• 1:08:13
  through and they're like, let's get rid of all these accounts
• 1:08:14
  and follow these guys instead. Or because there's some reason.
• 1:08:17
  I'm sure there's a reason. And even if it was that I did
• 1:08:20
  something, I got to work with him.
• 1:08:21
  That's fine. It was a thing.
• 1:08:22
  If it's if it's over, it's over. Who cares?
• 1:08:24
  I got a whole. Career.
• 1:08:25
  What? Why?
• 1:08:26
  Why? It's awesome.
• 1:08:26
  Studying a Ryan Reynolds fool? I'm just kidding.
• 1:08:28
  I love you, Ryan. Don't forget me.
• 1:08:30
  What I want to ask you is it was more like if you have like a
• 1:08:32
  working relationship with like said actor where you can do a
• 1:08:35
  sound alike voice like do they sometimes approach you and be
• 1:08:38
  like hey listen I don't have time to do X next thing no no.
• 1:08:40
  No, no, no. Usually that is that's a thing
• 1:08:43
  that is to. I do that all the time.
• 1:08:44
  But it's not Ryan's, it's not Ryan's decision.
• 1:08:46
  That's just the studios that know oh John's, John does Ryan
• 1:08:49
  sound alike. So we're just hiring him,
• 1:08:51
  especially productions that are the same studios making a
• 1:08:54
  different movie. I've already worked with that
• 1:08:56
  studio three other times doing Ryan's voice, so they already
• 1:08:58
  said boom, automatic. But do they have to contact Ryan
• 1:09:02
  and be like, hey, listen. You know, usually when I get it,
• 1:09:03
  Ryan's already done a scratch read all the way through and
• 1:09:06
  they're just like, OK, so we have just kind of a base.
• 1:09:08
  Is he would have. Approved doesn't have time.
• 1:09:10
  Yeah, obviously. So he just doesn't have time.
• 1:09:13
  The only time that they would not bring him in is if it's so
• 1:09:16
  early in production. Like I'm talking about way early
• 1:09:18
  where they don't even have an animatic yet.
• 1:09:19
  All they have is storyboards. So this is just so If you've
• 1:09:23
  ever had a DVD of a Platinum Diamond Edition DVD from
• 1:09:26
  Disney's Blu-ray, just released from the Disney Vault.
• 1:09:28
  If you remember, watch the behind the scenes stuff and they
• 1:09:30
  show how they make an animated movie or how they make an
• 1:09:33
  animated show. They don't start off with the
• 1:09:35
  voices. Usually you get people that work
• 1:09:38
  on the production doing really crappy voices.
• 1:09:40
  Like I've seen stuff, for example, off the top of my head,
• 1:09:43
  Pixar. With Finding Nemo.
• 1:09:45
  It was neither Dory's voice nor Marlon's voice.
• 1:09:48
  It was just the people that it was Bob and whoever worked at
• 1:09:50
  Pixar's voices temporarily when they're making the animatic.
• 1:09:54
  Oh, in the mini, in the mini trailer things.
• 1:09:56
  So, so yeah, so you'll see pictures where the fish is just
• 1:09:59
  like and you'll hear the voice and it'll cut to another pic.
• 1:10:01
  It's all hand drawn and that's an animatic.
• 1:10:04
  And then they go from animatic to actually doing the the
• 1:10:06
  animation and then they get the real voices in.
• 1:10:09
  So it there's a whole prog process to it.
• 1:10:11
  So when I do that early, early on, Ryan may not even be
• 1:10:14
  involved yet. They may not.
• 1:10:15
  They may just hope be hoping to get Ryan.
• 1:10:17
  So they want to have this thing to pitch.
• 1:10:18
  So like here's here's what it would be kind of like if you did
• 1:10:21
  this. I would rather them.
• 1:10:22
  I would rather them have me do it than AI because AI can
• 1:10:25
  improvise. It still sounds very robotic.
• 1:10:28
  It does not have that human ability to come up with funny
• 1:10:31
  things up because we working on the last Ryan Reynolds movie
• 1:10:34
  that I'm currently working on. The Improvs make it so much
• 1:10:36
  funnier because I have to think like Ryan does.
• 1:10:39
  And I'll find a lot of times when the movie comes out, they
• 1:10:41
  even use some of the jokes I came up with because it sounds
• 1:10:43
  like something Ryan would say and they get Ryan to do it.
• 1:10:44
  And now it sounds like Ryan's joke, but I came up with it.
• 1:10:47
  That's a bit. Shaky.
• 1:10:47
  Feel good. I get.
• 1:10:48
  I get paid though. I don't have a problem with it
• 1:10:50
  because I'm like, if my joke was good enough for Ryan Reynolds to
• 1:10:53
  use it, that's freaking cool, man.
• 1:10:55
  I'm good with that. I just.
• 1:10:57
  I just love this. Idea Cool stories for podcasts
• 1:10:59
  and and panels so I can talk about, yeah.
• 1:11:01
  I love this idea of like, walking in and like, you're not
• 1:11:04
  even like they they they haven't even cast you in the movie yet.
• 1:11:06
  They're thinking that they want to cast you and then you hear
• 1:11:09
  your voice by someone you know. Like, obviously he's what he
• 1:11:12
  knows that you do his voice and stuff.
• 1:11:13
  It's just it'd just be weird to me to hear my voice being done
• 1:11:16
  by another person. Like I hear it also.
• 1:11:18
  People trying to do it, so that's I'm kind of used to it.
• 1:11:22
  I have AI, have a funny response automatic.
• 1:11:24
  I'm like, don't quit your day job.
• 1:11:27
  One thing I just said, this sort of side, that one thing I always
• 1:11:30
  used to Love Actually, we might as well bring up now.
• 1:11:32
  Like, so obviously you're the the, the the voice, the epic
• 1:11:36
  voice guy, the voice behind Honest Trailers.
• 1:11:39
  I think that might be where many people might be most familiar
• 1:11:42
  with away. And be shocked finding out that
• 1:11:45
  I did all this other stuff or the vice versa, like, oh, you're
• 1:11:47
  in tram? Wait, you're the voice of Honest
• 1:11:49
  Trailers? It's always it's one way or the
• 1:11:50
  other. Somebody actually connects the
• 1:11:52
  dots. One thing I loved was always at
• 1:11:55
  the end of a video. It'd just be like a bunch of
• 1:11:58
  stuff in the comments. Yeah, we would send this stuff
• 1:12:00
  and just ask you like, can you say this?
• 1:12:02
  Can you say this? Can you say this?
• 1:12:03
  And I always just wondered like what it would be for you.
• 1:12:05
  Like when some some of the stuff that comes in, there's probably
• 1:12:08
  just like some weird lingo where you have to like Urban
• 1:12:10
  Dictionary and be like what the hell?
• 1:12:12
  Is this freaking clue so stupid? Because they're based on, like,
• 1:12:15
  memes and they want me, and they want me to read it as closely to
• 1:12:19
  the way that they wrote it as possible.
• 1:12:20
  It's sound, right? Ridiculous to be.
• 1:12:22
  Honest, my My absolute favorite was just like someone just
• 1:12:24
  getting you to just say. B.
• 1:12:26
  So something weird about that out.
• 1:12:29
  I don't. I don't, But it's.
• 1:12:31
  Just so inappropriate. But I just read the scripts,
• 1:12:33
  people. I promise, OK, we've moved on to
• 1:12:37
  ABS and memes so we can make fun of the guys.
• 1:12:41
  Now we get those man boobs. OK, so a couple of questions
• 1:12:45
  with this first question, how did you where does this voice
• 1:12:51
  come from, where, how do, how do you build this particular voice?
• 1:12:55
  Well, that one was just kind of a kilometer of all the other
• 1:12:57
  movie trailer voices out there. I started off doing a Donald L
• 1:13:00
  Fontaine impression who was like the godfather of all movie
• 1:13:03
  trailer voices. The most famous when people
• 1:13:05
  would recognize him for is probably Terminator Judgement
• 1:13:08
  Day. You know that he just had that
• 1:13:09
  hardcore edge action sound. That's why I started there.
• 1:13:13
  And then I kind of worked my way into doing my own voice with the
• 1:13:16
  producer that worked with my first manager who had found me
• 1:13:19
  on YouTube just doing a a compilation that I had created
• 1:13:23
  myself of. I was like, you know what, It'd
• 1:13:26
  be funny to have a movie trailer that literally covers every
• 1:13:28
  different genre of movie so I can do all the different movie
• 1:13:31
  trailer voices. So you start off with one and
• 1:13:34
  then the next one goes into this one.
• 1:13:36
  The guy who does this, his name is Ashton Smith and then I went
• 1:13:40
  to how Douglas and then the Princess went to a castle far
• 1:13:43
  away in a magical land of ponies.
• 1:13:45
  That was how Douglas who passed away.
• 1:13:47
  So I just like, but every every trailer LED into the next
• 1:13:49
  trailer. He found that video.
• 1:13:50
  I was like, dude, I feel like you have a lot of potential A
• 1:13:53
  lot of people don't even know who these voice actors are and
• 1:13:56
  you do spot on sound alikes for all these guys.
• 1:13:58
  We think you have your own trailer voice in there somewhere
• 1:14:01
  but we'd like to work with you in person.
• 1:14:02
  So that's kind of how it it became a thing.
• 1:14:04
  So it's kind of AI kind of just threw all the main 3 or 4 the
• 1:14:08
  movie trailer guys into a blender and then this came down.
• 1:14:11
  So there you go. It's not, I always say,
• 1:14:15
  unfortunately. No, no, no.
• 1:14:16
  I I just love hearing that because I I think one of the
• 1:14:18
  things that always stood out to me was the different inflections
• 1:14:21
  you'd use. Like one that just comes to mind
• 1:14:24
  is the Home Alone one, where it's like a lot higher and like
• 1:14:27
  every single Christmas trailer was always like that and it it's
• 1:14:31
  just spot on. Like you can tell that you do
• 1:14:33
  it. Was my that's my actual family
• 1:14:35
  friendly trailer voice that I booked for a whole bunch because
• 1:14:37
  they were actually like wait we've never done a.
• 1:14:38
  And I told him back then it's like why are we doing kid
• 1:14:40
  movies? Why are we doing cartoons?
• 1:14:41
  You know I, you know I do more than one trailer voice, right.
• 1:14:44
  It was like really hard to get through that.
• 1:14:46
  I do a whole lot more than what I do.
• 1:14:48
  And then I started like oh by the way I'm friends with so and
• 1:14:50
  so would you like him to read the comments for the end of this
• 1:14:52
  because this is his movie. So that's how you got Max from
• 1:14:55
  Goofy Movie at the end of the Goofy Movie on his trailer.
• 1:14:57
  Like I'm friends with those folks so I bring them in.
• 1:15:00
  Like I had my buddy Elias come in for the machinima trailer.
• 1:15:04
  Whatever video game Ex Machina, he plays one of the so he did
• 1:15:08
  the he did he's Jensen Ackle or Jensen what's that whatever his
• 1:15:12
  name is and he did the comments at the end of that.
• 1:15:13
  So I like I'm I'm friends with these folks I like to have them
• 1:15:16
  involved with it and I don't think that any other voice actor
• 1:15:19
  that's that does movie trailer type stuff has that what I can
• 1:15:23
  do for them. I don't think anybody else could
• 1:15:24
  do not very well anyway because I'm I'm more than just a
• 1:15:27
  standard. I'm more than just a voice over
• 1:15:29
  artist. I'm a voice.
• 1:15:32
  I'm so much more. So I agree.
• 1:15:35
  I I I was booking the first one of those I think a book was
• 1:15:39
  Smurfs and and it was that was just the voice coming soon to
• 1:15:44
  own on on DVD The Smurfs. And so I just sent him a clip of
• 1:15:49
  one of the trailers I actually did.
• 1:15:50
  They're like Oh yeah we could do and this.
• 1:15:52
  Then we did Frozen and holy crap it just blew up the Internet.
• 1:15:56
  It was 30 million views in a in a couple of weeks and they're
• 1:15:59
  like, man, we need to do more kids movie like freaking thing.
• 1:16:03
  I said also we should be doing horror movie trailers.
• 1:16:05
  I also do a horror movie trailer voice and we should be doing
• 1:16:07
  video games. We do have an audience for that.
• 1:16:09
  Two weeks later, hey, we're gonna be doing video game on his
• 1:16:11
  trailer. Like, oh, I wonder who gave you
• 1:16:12
  that idea. I just love where they came
• 1:16:16
  from. Like the the kids ones always
• 1:16:18
  reminded me of like. And for those, there'll be
• 1:16:20
  people listening that won't know what I'm talking about.
• 1:16:22
  So in the 90s and 2000s when like a lot of Disney movies won
• 1:16:27
  home VHS, they would like put these video packages together, a
• 1:16:31
  big trailer, maybe 5-10 minutes at the beginning, which
• 1:16:34
  advertised every other film. And it was like, OK great, but I
• 1:16:36
  just want to watch the movie already.
• 1:16:38
  But they were actually really well put together and one of the
• 1:16:40
  things that always stood out was the the voice acting or the
• 1:16:43
  voice over as in his. Name was.
• 1:16:45
  His name was Mark Elliott. He passed away two years ago
• 1:16:47
  though. So yeah, Mark Elliott was the
• 1:16:50
  Disney, the the, the Disney voice and everybody the the what
• 1:16:54
  you guys would know him from is from TikTok.
• 1:16:56
  There's a lot of just those clips of coming soon to on on
• 1:16:59
  Disney DVD just released from the Disney Vault.
• 1:17:03
  He was just that guy. There's a there's a lot of
• 1:17:08
  different projects I just want to kind of run for.
• 1:17:10
  Just a a few particular ones that I sort of took from your
• 1:17:13
  IMDb that stood out just. So you know, my IMDb is not 100%
• 1:17:17
  accurate. I don't know how people add and
• 1:17:18
  take away things on that thing. Really, most of this is missing
• 1:17:21
  and a couple of things on there I didn't even do, like I don't
• 1:17:23
  what is Cadillac, something I don't remember doing that.
• 1:17:25
  So it's like Wikipedia, anyone can just edit it.
• 1:17:27
  Fine. I don't see that's the thing.
• 1:17:29
  If it's like Wikipedia, why can't I put myself as the main
• 1:17:31
  cast member of a movie or TV show?
• 1:17:33
  You just to add whatever you want.
• 1:17:35
  I have the same problem. Like, people say that to me,
• 1:17:39
  like there's a few things on your IMDBM.
• 1:17:41
  There's so much more like on my website, my spotlight.
• 1:17:43
  That's where this stuff is. Don't.
• 1:17:44
  Credit us. We don't get credited for the
• 1:17:46
  movie trailers. There's so much jobs.
• 1:17:47
  We don't even get credit for mobile games.
• 1:17:50
  I've done dozens of mobile games.
• 1:17:51
  They're not on my IMDb. There's so much stuff that's not
• 1:17:54
  there. One one thing I would say, just
• 1:17:56
  going back to our previous conversation about ADR work, I I
• 1:17:58
  think it's a travesty that it's not actually credited probably
• 1:18:02
  because it is legitimate work like.
• 1:18:03
  Yeah, and they they credit the the ADR group like the the
• 1:18:07
  company name and maybe the ADR casting director or engineer.
• 1:18:11
  Those are the probably the only three credits you'll see for
• 1:18:13
  ADR. If he doesn't, if you're not listening additional voices,
• 1:18:16
  you're just not going to get listed.
• 1:18:17
  It just goes nuts because like I've only ever done ADR once in
• 1:18:20
  my life. I did it for Channel 4, not
• 1:18:22
  directly. It was like through a company
• 1:18:24
  for Channel 4 for like some TV show.
• 1:18:27
  For those who are wondering, it's called Everyone Else Burns
• 1:18:30
  Simon Bird Production and it was a lot of fun.
• 1:18:33
  It was 8 different voice actors in a room with overhead mics and
• 1:18:38
  they just told us improvised conversation based on what's on
• 1:18:41
  the screen. I was like, this is brilliant.
• 1:18:43
  I love this. But play by the rules don't
• 1:18:45
  mention. Yeah.
• 1:18:47
  Oh, no, no, no. It was.
• 1:18:50
  I had a guy, dude, I had a guy that came off TikTok and he was
• 1:18:52
  like, hey, so you want to go get some Starbucks?
• 1:18:54
  I'm like, what are you doing, man?
• 1:18:55
  You know how much money they got to pay for you to say Starbucks
• 1:18:57
  in the background? This is feels unnatural, though
• 1:19:00
  you wouldn't say that you'd be like should we go get, should we
• 1:19:02
  get coffee? Get some coffee?
• 1:19:03
  Yeah, Like, why did you say Star?
• 1:19:04
  He's like let's. Go get some Starbucks.
• 1:19:06
  Looks like you're time to break the rules.
• 1:19:11
  This is why I recommend get coaching.
• 1:19:13
  Know what you're doing before you do the job.
• 1:19:15
  You would have No, really. It's almost like you can't go to
• 1:19:19
  a job and do it without training.
• 1:19:20
  I don't know. It's crazy.
• 1:19:24
  OK, you worked. Maybe you worked for WWE2K20?
• 1:19:29
  I was on 2K20 and 2K21 or night. No, it's 19 and 20.
• 1:19:33
  I was on Buzz. I was.
• 1:19:34
  Gonna say 'cause the 21 was canned, so that was a bit of a.
• 1:19:37
  Crazy, Yeah, 19 and 20. I played various commentators.
• 1:19:42
  This was interesting because they they tried to do more story
• 1:19:45
  like they've always done story stuff in in the 2K series and
• 1:19:47
  then the previous. I grew up on the Smackdown War
• 1:19:50
  games. That was my kind of a, but I
• 1:19:52
  thought they did some pretty ambitious stuff, especially with
• 1:19:54
  the two K 2020 and. Yeah, I love the customer
• 1:19:57
  create. The customer creation character
• 1:19:59
  thing was kind of awesome because we had Optimus Prime and
• 1:20:01
  Ninja Turtles wrestling on the ring with Goldberg and everybody
• 1:20:03
  else. I was just wondering like what
• 1:20:05
  what was that like for you working with with that team,
• 1:20:07
  like what did you get out of? That I I do have one funny story
• 1:20:10
  about that. So I they were for 2K20.
• 1:20:13
  They were looking for Memphis commentators.
• 1:20:15
  And I'm like, make sure you tell them I'm literally born and
• 1:20:17
  raised in Memphis. Like my my normal accent is just
• 1:20:20
  a Memphis accent. And I swear it went through
• 1:20:23
  three people. They're like, oh, cool, I didn't
• 1:20:25
  know you were from Memphis. And I'm like, yeah, make sure
• 1:20:27
  you let them know. And then I got to the session
• 1:20:29
  and like, so can you do a believable Memphis accent?
• 1:20:32
  How many times do I need to tell people I was born and raised and
• 1:20:35
  meant they're like, really? I'm like, I've been saying this
• 1:20:37
  for freaking months. Like what?
• 1:20:40
  I. Feel like it's not.
• 1:20:41
  Communication. Dude, that to me that's like.
• 1:20:44
  I mean that's like when I go for job interviews, for jobs I don't
• 1:20:46
  want and maybe it's my own fault, but like I'll get in the
• 1:20:50
  interview and you know, I would have sent them my CV and they're
• 1:20:53
  like, so tell me about your experience and I'm like read
• 1:20:55
  the, read the CV, read the documents, I.
• 1:20:58
  Sent you. They make us fill out stuff for
• 1:21:00
  hours and. Just read the document that has
• 1:21:03
  the information on it. That's literally.
• 1:21:04
  It tells you everything you need to know, just like.
• 1:21:06
  I didn't make it. I didn't make him do a negative
• 1:21:08
  thing. But I was just like, well, I
• 1:21:10
  literally saw Jerry Lewis, Jerry Lawler at freaking Saint Jude
• 1:21:14
  Hospital because I was there with my own kid.
• 1:21:17
  I'm from Memphis, by the way. So.
• 1:21:20
  So you got an actual Memphis commentator for the Memphis
• 1:21:23
  commentator in WW EK2K20. Did you go up for?
• 1:21:26
  Raymond fan or or. I grew up with Andre the Giant
• 1:21:30
  and Hulk Hogan and Jerry Lawler, so we I was kind of there at the
• 1:21:33
  very, very beginning, but I just wasn't into it because it was
• 1:21:37
  like once you've seen a couple of seconds, I I'm on the
• 1:21:38
  spectrum. So once I've seen a couple of
• 1:21:40
  seconds, I'm like, well, I've pretty much seen the whole thing
• 1:21:41
  now because it's the same thing every time because it's a soap
• 1:21:45
  opera. No offense, but it's a soap
• 1:21:46
  opera and it kind of, it wasn't enough there to draw me into it.
• 1:21:49
  As opposed to like the cartoons where a different story
• 1:21:52
  happened, even though the cartoons were very repetitive
• 1:21:54
  too, but there was a slightly different story each time.
• 1:21:56
  With wrestling for me as like a 5 year old, it just kind of
• 1:21:59
  seemed like I feel like I just watched this, this is the same
• 1:22:01
  thing that and my parents were super against.
• 1:22:03
  Oh, we're not watching this. This is violent.
• 1:22:04
  So between all that I was like, but Andre the Giant actually
• 1:22:08
  came by our church one time to speak and gave his testimony and
• 1:22:11
  put his you know he had does the thing where he puts the hand.
• 1:22:13
  He did that to my our pastor and put his whole whole head in his
• 1:22:15
  hand. There's a picture of him hanging
• 1:22:17
  up somewhere in the church building back.
• 1:22:18
  Well that was back then. Him standing next to and he the
• 1:22:22
  pastor, The pastor was 6 foot one or so and he keeps like
• 1:22:25
  right here. Under the Giant you worked with
• 1:22:29
  the Nostalgia Critic for those who don't know.
• 1:22:32
  Been a minute though. Yeah, this.
• 1:22:34
  So this is like old YouTube law, like, you know, early 2000s.
• 1:22:38
  For those who don't know, basically he did movie reviews.
• 1:22:42
  That was kind of his thing, although his but.
• 1:22:45
  They had a, they had a, they had a crew.
• 1:22:47
  So they kind of included sketches and kind of parodied
• 1:22:49
  the movie in the review. But yeah, they were kind of
• 1:22:52
  like, it was Honest Trailers nostalgia Critic and Cinema
• 1:22:56
  Sans. We're like the three main guys
• 1:22:58
  that did movie trailer stuff or movie stuff.
• 1:23:01
  And they, we, we were guests together at some convention.
• 1:23:06
  And then he found out what I could do.
• 1:23:08
  It's the same thing with everybody when they all find out
• 1:23:10
  that I'm not just the announcement, I'm not just a
• 1:23:12
  voice over artist. And they found that I don't just
• 1:23:15
  do this, the announcer voice and all of a sudden it's like, oh
• 1:23:16
  crap, you can do all this other stuff.
• 1:23:18
  He's like, I have so many more ideas now.
• 1:23:19
  We got to do some more stuff and then we did a couple of things
• 1:23:21
  and I never heard from him again, so I don't know what.
• 1:23:25
  I It just makes me feel like it just feel like you've been used
• 1:23:28
  a little bit. I don't know, maybe it's just.
• 1:23:29
  Yeah, I mean, it was fine. It was like I got promotion out
• 1:23:31
  of it, you know? It was a collab and it helped me
• 1:23:33
  get some views. It helped me have something for
• 1:23:35
  IMDb and it was cool to work with them.
• 1:23:37
  If it doesn't work out, I don't get.
• 1:23:40
  I don't get hung up on things that don't work out or they
• 1:23:41
  don't continue to use me like I love, for example, I love,
• 1:23:45
  absolutely freaking love working with how it should have ended.
• 1:23:47
  They're one of my favorite groups to work with.
• 1:23:50
  They're not a stickler about the audio.
• 1:23:52
  They let me improvise, come up. They don't always use it.
• 1:23:54
  If I give them a lot of effect, if anything I give them too much
• 1:23:56
  because they for Indominus Rex, they said we had the worst time
• 1:23:59
  trying to pick the voice for the because all of them were so
• 1:24:02
  freaking. I gave them three really funny
• 1:24:04
  different versions and they end up settling on Paula Deen
• 1:24:07
  because it's just, you know later now I'm going to eat you
• 1:24:10
  now, OK, This thing that they just thought that one was the
• 1:24:13
  funniest. So but those guys don't hire me
• 1:24:16
  every week. They hire me every once in a
• 1:24:17
  while and they don't really hire me as per SE.
• 1:24:19
  Like hey, can we've got like 2-3 lines.
• 1:24:21
  Can you think you could do these?
• 1:24:22
  And I'm always like, I try to show how quick I could do these
• 1:24:25
  things. So you can hire me more because
• 1:24:26
  look how fast I get it back to you.
• 1:24:27
  But you know, they, they like to do their own voices.
• 1:24:30
  And I understand if I was making my own animated projects, which
• 1:24:32
  I am by the way. That's news.
• 1:24:35
  I'm starting my own animation company.
• 1:24:37
  I've already got six series starting.
• 1:24:39
  I've got one that's really, really well fleshed out with
• 1:24:42
  with over 90 episodes in a film synopsis written, 4 episodes
• 1:24:47
  drafted, and then I've got five others where I've got pitches,
• 1:24:50
  Duns pitch decks are finished. I've got 4 show bibles out of
• 1:24:53
  six finished. So I I I'm totally going to cast
• 1:24:56
  myself for a lot of my own characters too.
• 1:24:58
  So I'm not going to feel bad if anybody doesn't hire me as much
• 1:25:01
  as they hire themselves. No matter how bad they are or
• 1:25:04
  good they are at voices. It doesn't matter, 'cause it's
• 1:25:06
  their show, it's their project. If they want to do the voices
• 1:25:08
  for it, I will respect the crap out of that, 'cause I know
• 1:25:10
  that's what I want to do for myself.
• 1:25:12
  But would I do more voices, you know, should end it if I could?
• 1:25:16
  Yes, because I love working with them so much and their stuff's
• 1:25:18
  really funny and it's well animated.
• 1:25:20
  So. But you don't get to pick, you
• 1:25:21
  know. So if I don't hear from those
• 1:25:22
  guys in a year, I got to work on them.
• 1:25:24
  I got to do stuff. I know eventually they know I'm
• 1:25:26
  here, they know how to contact me, but I don't have to.
• 1:25:29
  I try not to get hold up on stuff like that.
• 1:25:30
  But yeah, every once in a while I'll get to do a cool thing.
• 1:25:32
  I'll do it. You probably saw the date on
• 1:25:34
  that was a long time ago. And then I'll never hear from
• 1:25:36
  him again. Or maybe I'll hear from him a
• 1:25:38
  year later or maybe it'll be next week.
• 1:25:40
  I never know. But one thing I've learned about
• 1:25:42
  this business, not just about jobs that you have done or
• 1:25:45
  anything. Audition, whatever.
• 1:25:47
  You have to have. Freaking duck feathers, man.
• 1:25:50
  Ducks are awesome. Water never effects them.
• 1:25:53
  He goes right off their backs. They go underwater, come out and
• 1:25:55
  not be wet. You have to be that way or else
• 1:25:58
  you won't drive yourself crazy and end up quitting.
• 1:26:00
  Saying I'm just can't do this. I never get hired.
• 1:26:02
  Why didn't they hire me back? I did such a great job.
• 1:26:04
  What? You'll fill yourself full of
• 1:26:06
  self doubt which will turn into insecurity which will affect
• 1:26:08
  your ability to do the job. I I think like, if anything,
• 1:26:12
  what we've really sort of established in this show so far
• 1:26:14
  is that it's about like, yeah, believing in in what you're
• 1:26:17
  doing, being a professional and carrying yourself like that.
• 1:26:20
  Like I've noticed. Knowing what you're doing, don't
• 1:26:22
  get your heart set on anything. You just have to let things roll
• 1:26:25
  but have thick skin and just keep freaking going.
• 1:26:27
  It's just it's it's like Rocky, you just keep going.
• 1:26:30
  Even if you lose. You just freaking keep going,
• 1:26:32
  man. You keep punching that meat.
• 1:26:34
  That's how they sounded bad. Don't say that.
• 1:26:38
  And so you you've done like you've been at comic conventions
• 1:26:41
  quite a bit, like what would you say is your most memorable
• 1:26:43
  experience at a Comic Con? Oh, that was a good question.
• 1:26:47
  When I was at San Diego Comic Con for the very first time, I
• 1:26:51
  was walking down the streets of San Diego and I ran into Keith
• 1:26:54
  David just there on the street. Holy freaking crap, that's
• 1:26:58
  Goliath from Gargoyles, and I'd always wanted to ask him what
• 1:27:02
  happened with Transformers. People don't know this, but he
• 1:27:05
  was originally supposed to be the voice of Barricade and
• 1:27:07
  Transformers 1 2007 and I was very disappointed because Keith
• 1:27:11
  David has the best voice. I love Peter Cullen's voice, but
• 1:27:15
  Keith David's voice, it's just it's my favorite freaking voice.
• 1:27:17
  It's always it's so freaking good.
• 1:27:20
  And he did the voice for the post released or now pre
• 1:27:23
  released video games for Transformers but did not end up
• 1:27:27
  being the voice in the movie. So I was just, I first thing I
• 1:27:30
  said was like, every time I see a commercial for the Navy, I get
• 1:27:32
  a big smile on my face because he's the guy that's like the
• 1:27:34
  Navy. You know, he's the commercial
• 1:27:37
  and he's like he and he this is the funniest part.
• 1:27:39
  Like he he responds, that's just how he sounds.
• 1:27:42
  Everybody. He goes, thank you very much.
• 1:27:43
  I appreciate that. Like, holy crap, that sounds so
• 1:27:46
  cool. But just normal conversation.
• 1:27:49
  And that was just like, I've always wondered why weren't why
• 1:27:51
  did you end up not being Barricade in the movie?
• 1:27:53
  Did something happen? And he's like, I don't know
• 1:27:55
  what. I guess they just got somebody
• 1:27:56
  else. That was his only answer.
• 1:27:57
  So I'm guessing either he just doesn't want to talk about it or
• 1:27:59
  he just doesn't know. So that made me very
• 1:28:01
  disappointed because as much as Jess Arnell's cool, he was
• 1:28:05
  already Ironhide. And no offense to Jess, but not
• 1:28:07
  my favorite voice for Ironhide. I still think they should have
• 1:28:10
  just got Peter Collin to do of Ironhide.
• 1:28:12
  Why? I don't understand.
• 1:28:13
  He was Ironhide. They already had him.
• 1:28:16
  I don't know anyway, but I didn't.
• 1:28:17
  I thought Keith David would have just been.
• 1:28:18
  Even though Barricade doesn't have a big scene, it's a cool
• 1:28:21
  scene and he was a cool character.
• 1:28:22
  That car was sick. The robot was cool didn't love
• 1:28:26
  Frenzy being in the tape deck thing but the rest of it was
• 1:28:28
  awesome and I just think it would I've I've wanted to go
• 1:28:31
  back and dub it with Keith David's voice just to show
• 1:28:33
  everybody how cool it would have been.
• 1:28:34
  But but yeah that was a that was probably the coolest thing
• 1:28:37
  that's ever happened to at a Comic Con to me.
• 1:28:39
  It was getting to meet Keith David in a non panel setting not
• 1:28:41
  having to pay for it. I didn't get a picture with him
• 1:28:44
  which I I wanted to but I was respectful of the fact that he
• 1:28:47
  was not in the convention. He was out having fun doing
• 1:28:49
  whatever. So I didn't you know and two
• 1:28:51
  seconds later we see drunk John Dimaggi on the street going hey
• 1:28:53
  everybody come on brought me a beer.
• 1:28:55
  I'm better baby. You know, he's just hanging with
• 1:28:57
  his fans, getting freaked, alcohol all night.
• 1:29:01
  Well, this all happened in the same night, by the way.
• 1:29:03
  And I was like, hey, where's your?
• 1:29:04
  Because he'd just recently gotten married because I'd heard
• 1:29:06
  it. I was like, hey, where's your
• 1:29:07
  wife? He goes, oh, crap, man.
• 1:29:09
  I don't know. He's like, you think I know
• 1:29:12
  because I just married her like a couple of months ago.
• 1:29:14
  I have no idea. He was, like, wasting.
• 1:29:17
  So funny. I was like, that's that's what
• 1:29:19
  they do. And they when you get to that
• 1:29:20
  level of actor and then you go to Comic Con, you just walk
• 1:29:23
  around and people just offer to buy you free drinks.
• 1:29:24
  It must be amazing. I don't drink, so it doesn't
• 1:29:27
  really work for me. Yeah, same so unless.
• 1:29:30
  It's unless it's Smooth Aviation American Gym made for my actual
• 1:29:34
  sweat. You mentioned fans that like
• 1:29:38
  what have been some of your sort of most memorable fan
• 1:29:41
  interactions? Good memories or?
• 1:29:46
  Well, just anything that stands out I guess.
• 1:29:49
  I had a very weird alter. I've had a few weird
• 1:29:52
  altercations. I had a guy that was like, I
• 1:29:55
  don't know if you remember that scene in the Jim Carrey Batman
• 1:29:59
  as a Batman and Robin or Batman Batman Forever where he grabs
• 1:30:02
  Bruce Wayne's hand and he won't like, he's I'm going to need a
• 1:30:04
  hand back. I had that happen for real, like
• 1:30:06
  this guy got a hold of my hand. He starts shaking my hand and
• 1:30:08
  then his other hand grabs my forearm and then he's not
• 1:30:11
  letting go. When I try to pull, he pulls
• 1:30:12
  back and he was literally Chris farling me.
• 1:30:15
  He was like, hey, you remember that one thing you did that one
• 1:30:18
  time? That was cool.
• 1:30:20
  He just went on and I'm like, yeah, I know I was there
• 1:30:22
  finally. My wife at the time was like,
• 1:30:24
  hey, we need to go. I'm like, yeah, yeah, we need to
• 1:30:26
  go. And he's like okay.
• 1:30:27
  And then he let go of me. I was a little concerned, to be
• 1:30:30
  honest with you, because he just latched on and that's what I
• 1:30:33
  learned. Like fist bumps do not shake
• 1:30:35
  people's hands, you know? Don't give them the chance to
• 1:30:37
  hold on to you. Keep that in mind.
• 1:30:39
  Way to get bitten. Or worse, who knows?
• 1:30:44
  What has voice acting taught you about life?
• 1:30:48
  That life is a grind. That nothing is guaranteed.
• 1:30:52
  There is no 100% that you're going to be here tomorrow and be
• 1:30:55
  fine. You may have a job today, it'd
• 1:30:57
  be broke. The next day you have.
• 1:30:59
  You may be booking a show that's the most popular show in the
• 1:31:01
  world. And then the end of the season
• 1:31:03
  comes and you find out you're not getting renewed.
• 1:31:05
  And then now what? You know.
• 1:31:07
  So yeah, even you mentioned earlier, like, you still have to
• 1:31:09
  audition and you still have to grind.
• 1:31:11
  Every voice actor has to grind. I literally got a message from
• 1:31:15
  Marisa Marsh A couple of weeks ago.
• 1:31:16
  I had an audition for Orson Welles.
• 1:31:18
  And I'm like, why didn't they send this to Marisa Marsh?
• 1:31:20
  He literally does that voice for Pinky and the Brain.
• 1:31:22
  It doesn't make any sense why they didn't do it.
• 1:31:24
  When I I sent it to him without listening to it because I was on
• 1:31:26
  the road. But when I listened to it, it
• 1:31:28
  was young. It was a very, very young Orson
• 1:31:31
  Welles where he sounded like this.
• 1:31:33
  He didn't sound like this, like his old voice that, you know,
• 1:31:36
  Maurice Lamarche is known for doing.
• 1:31:38
  Yes, always. And he was just way, way higher
• 1:31:41
  than that. He's like that name.
• 1:31:42
  That's the reason why he said you think too.
• 1:31:43
  He's like, I'm not saying that I own that voice or anything, but
• 1:31:45
  you'd think being the guy who has did that for like a dozen
• 1:31:49
  years as a main character, that I'd be the go to guy for an
• 1:31:51
  Orson Welles satellite. But here we are.
• 1:31:53
  He's like I appreciate you letting me know though And I
• 1:31:56
  said, well, I didn't know I I said I didn't want to a assume
• 1:31:59
  that you were too busy or that the rate was too low for you
• 1:32:01
  because I I don't know, he said. Let me tell you something John.
• 1:32:05
  Everybody grinds. Everybody, even the guys at the
• 1:32:08
  very top of the game are doing everything they can and
• 1:32:10
  auditioning and doing stuff every single day.
• 1:32:12
  It never stops. No matter what level you get to
• 1:32:15
  you always have to grind. And I feel like the same thing
• 1:32:18
  with life. If you don't grind, you'll die.
• 1:32:21
  Or you'll just get complacent and lazy and you'll just waste
• 1:32:23
  your life away and not accomplish anything.
• 1:32:25
  And you know, you just have to keep going.
• 1:32:27
  It's and I've I've applied that same thing to my personal life.
• 1:32:30
  I don't just sit around. That's how you get unhealthy.
• 1:32:32
  I freaking get out and hike. I make stuff.
• 1:32:34
  I creates. If I'm not auditioning, I'm
• 1:32:36
  writing, I'm getting out there working.
• 1:32:38
  I'm going to do a stand up thing or I'm going to an event.
• 1:32:41
  I'm networking, I'm doing something.
• 1:32:42
  I'm doing something that will help my career and help me stay
• 1:32:45
  mentally healthy and physically healthy.
• 1:32:47
  So you have to freaking grind, man.
• 1:32:48
  If you sit still, you might as well throw yourself in a box and
• 1:32:51
  bury yourself, 'cause you won't go anywhere.
• 1:32:53
  If you're stainless. Still, you only get somewhere if
• 1:32:55
  you're actually going there. What's the biggest mistake
• 1:32:58
  you've made that you learned a valuable life lesson from?
• 1:33:02
  I went to the studio with no pants on.
• 1:33:04
  That was a big, big problem for everybody.
• 1:33:06
  Except for me. No, I'm just kidding.
• 1:33:08
  Your face was like, wait, really?
• 1:33:10
  Well, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's some people
• 1:33:11
  who got uptight. Don't be wearing shorts here.
• 1:33:14
  I I feel like I wished I had known the proper way to audition
• 1:33:19
  when I first started, as opposing to my biggest problem
• 1:33:22
  was I'm a perfectionist. It's part of being on the
• 1:33:25
  spectrum. I just, it has to be freaking
• 1:33:27
  perfect. And I didn't realize, like with
• 1:33:29
  the little intro thing we did today, I don't have to read it
• 1:33:32
  verbatim. It does not have to be perfect.
• 1:33:34
  And if I mess up, just freaking keep going.
• 1:33:35
  Don't act like you didn't even make a mistake.
• 1:33:37
  Don't say oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm sorry.
• 1:33:39
  Let me do that again. You know how you don't get cash
• 1:33:41
  back every time you mess up? Oh man, sorry, sorry.
• 1:33:43
  Because all it shows is a lack of confidence and a lack of
• 1:33:45
  experience and just shows like you don't really know what
• 1:33:47
  you're doing. Even if you do, it's going to
• 1:33:49
  look like you don't. So to have that confidence and
• 1:33:51
  don't apologize, just keep freaking going or just say, hey,
• 1:33:53
  can I do one more of those and just keep Just keep doing it
• 1:33:57
  because you're human. And once I understood that I
• 1:34:02
  don't have to be picky until I get the job.
• 1:34:05
  If I haven't got the job yet, that's when you're supposed to
• 1:34:07
  have fun with it. A lot of people are not having
• 1:34:09
  fun with the auditions. They are just reading them and
• 1:34:11
  they're just line reading them. They're not having any fun.
• 1:34:14
  It's most of the job guys. If it's not fun, then it's not.
• 1:34:17
  You're not enjoying your job anymore.
• 1:34:19
  It's going to start feeling like work.
• 1:34:20
  And if you want to make this career, it shouldn't feel like
• 1:34:22
  work, it should feel like fun. You should enjoy yourself.
• 1:34:25
  When I do auditions, I have a great freaking time because I'm
• 1:34:27
  coming up with crazy funny stuff or interesting or cool stuff
• 1:34:30
  that they probably were never thinking of.
• 1:34:32
  Because I started realizing at all the programming of trying to
• 1:34:35
  do it perfect and trying to do it right.
• 1:34:36
  And reading the lines and trying to get through the whole take
• 1:34:38
  with no mistakes. Not having to edit anything.
• 1:34:40
  Or all the little things that my brain used to think going
• 1:34:43
  through an audition when I realized, like, just be yourself
• 1:34:45
  once you understand the character, be yourself, make it
• 1:34:48
  feel natural, make it feel real, do it the way you feel it and
• 1:34:51
  then and and you could do more than one take, do one where you
• 1:34:54
  just have freaking fun with it. Just do whatever that you want.
• 1:34:56
  There's no, there's no rule. I mean, unless they specifically
• 1:34:58
  rewrite down. No slates, only one take.
• 1:35:01
  Like if they're very specific in their audition, give them what
• 1:35:03
  they want. But if they're just a standard
• 1:35:05
  audition, like here, send this in.
• 1:35:06
  Here's how you label it. Freaking do your thing.
• 1:35:09
  Don't just try to do it. Because 90% of people are going
• 1:35:11
  to do whatever what you're you're thinking about doing.
• 1:35:12
  They're going to read it exactly what it's written.
• 1:35:14
  They're going to be so stickler about that, that voice over
• 1:35:16
  description. They're going to get 90 people
• 1:35:18
  out of 100 that are going to do the same thing.
• 1:35:20
  And I bet the top ten people who do something different than they
• 1:35:23
  did and didn't put so much effort into being perfect and
• 1:35:26
  making it sound exactly like the what's written and doing exactly
• 1:35:29
  what the voices, those are, the guys are going to get whittled
• 1:35:31
  down to the one that gets hired. That's the way it happens every
• 1:35:32
  time. Thank you, Sharon.
• 1:35:35
  Really appreciate it. It's goodbye.
• 1:35:37
  It took me. It took me freaking 10 years to
• 1:35:39
  understand that, as I can't even imagine how much more work I
• 1:35:41
  could have gotten or how much further in my career I would
• 1:35:44
  have gotten if I had understood that ahead of time.
• 1:35:46
  But it's not about being perfect.
• 1:35:47
  It's not about reading it exactly the way it's written and
• 1:35:50
  trying to be just so polished and professional.
• 1:35:52
  They don't want polished professionals.
• 1:35:53
  I don't know if you saw auditions lately.
• 1:35:55
  Guy reel next door. Not a storyteller, not a
• 1:35:58
  professional, not commercial sounding, not commercially.
• 1:36:01
  That's actually a word they use now.
• 1:36:02
  They tack ON-E at the end of commercial.
• 1:36:05
  That's the opposite. That's that's opposite of what I
• 1:36:07
  do. I just, it's got to be casual.
• 1:36:08
  Unless it's very specifically, like for a joke, they're doing a
• 1:36:11
  fake movie trailer. They wanted to sound like a real
• 1:36:12
  movie trailer. So you you when you're in on the
• 1:36:14
  joke, you understand. But if it's just an open, normal
• 1:36:17
  audition, don't do it the way everybody else does it.
• 1:36:21
  What's the best advice you've ever received?
• 1:36:25
  But the worst thing they can do is say no, the worst thing that
• 1:36:29
  they could. They're not nobody out there.
• 1:36:30
  No client is going that I know of is going to put a gun to your
• 1:36:33
  head or put you in a noose. If you don't do the voice right,
• 1:36:36
  you just won't get the job. The end.
• 1:36:38
  That's the worst that can possibly happen to you.
• 1:36:39
  So freaking go for it, man. Don't be afraid.
• 1:36:42
  Just freaking do it. What's the biggest life lesson
• 1:36:45
  you've learned so far? That meat is bad for my body.
• 1:36:53
  That is the big one. That's not a rule for everybody,
• 1:36:56
  but that's the biggest one for me.
• 1:36:58
  My life completely changed when I cut meat and and pork out.
• 1:37:02
  So how long? Not the question you were, Not
• 1:37:04
  the answer you were? No.
• 1:37:05
  No, hey, listen, it's any any answer is the right answer, I
• 1:37:09
  feel like. How How long have you been?
• 1:37:13
  So I mean, I I have a I have a little cheat every once in a
• 1:37:16
  while. I'm not full-fledged vegan or
• 1:37:17
  anything like that. I'm not crazy or any, you know.
• 1:37:20
  I'm not saying they are crazy, but I've seen people that can be
• 1:37:22
  crazy about being vegan because they're so sticklers about being
• 1:37:25
  vegan. But I mostly vegetarian.
• 1:37:28
  I'll still have chicken and every once in a while fish but
• 1:37:31
  never fried. If I can help it, that's for me.
• 1:37:33
  That's a cheat meal to fry it. I have to be very specific about
• 1:37:37
  not eating beef and pork. I just didn't know.
• 1:37:39
  I had no idea that. I mean, people have noticed.
• 1:37:42
  You can see I have a neck now and a jawline when I used to be
• 1:37:46
  this big around and I look like kingpin, like the comic book
• 1:37:49
  version, not the Vincent d'onofrio version.
• 1:37:51
  And I realized I just that was a big chunk of it was just bacon
• 1:37:54
  and bacon and boiled pork and and beef.
• 1:37:57
  So it's just a fat, isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:37:59
  I don't. I really don't know.
• 1:38:00
  But for whatever reason, it just slows down my entire digestive
• 1:38:02
  process. It causes me to retain weight
• 1:38:04
  and gain weight rather than losing weight.
• 1:38:06
  So I started switching to things that just go through your body
• 1:38:09
  naturally. Normal speed and all of a sudden
• 1:38:12
  the weight just and then I just started adding an exercise every
• 1:38:15
  day because I feel like how what is it going to matter that I'm
• 1:38:19
  great at voice over if I'm freaking dead or in a hospital
• 1:38:22
  bed because I'm too big to fit in the freaking booth.
• 1:38:24
  I've been over three I've been 335 pounds, 300 and 3035 lbs was
• 1:38:28
  my my heaviest. It was not healthy.
• 1:38:30
  I got I look like I was having a heart attack just from tying my
• 1:38:32
  shoes and standing back up. It's rough.
• 1:38:34
  So yeah, I feel like your your physical health and your mental
• 1:38:37
  health obviously, but your physical health can either
• 1:38:41
  shorten your career or it can make it last longer.
• 1:38:44
  So you just have to be careful because I have seen a few people
• 1:38:48
  that were bigger lost weight to change their physically, change
• 1:38:50
  their voices and I'm thankful that it did not.
• 1:38:52
  That's. What I was wondering about,
• 1:38:54
  yeah. I got that question a lot.
• 1:38:55
  I was like, hey, is your voice changed?
• 1:38:57
  I don't know if you're familiar with the Pawn Star series on hit
• 1:39:00
  on history. I think it is anyway.
• 1:39:02
  Yeah, yeah, the guys in Las Vegas.
• 1:39:04
  Big, big heavy set guy. Lost a ton of weight.
• 1:39:07
  His voice went up when and now he sounds like this but he but
• 1:39:10
  he used to sound like this and I was like whoa crap.
• 1:39:13
  And I was in the middle of losing weight.
• 1:39:15
  When I saw that I was like and so I messaged a few guys that
• 1:39:17
  were bigger like Kevin Michael Richardson.
• 1:39:19
  I said hey you've been a big guy and you've gone and I I just
• 1:39:22
  said does it affect your. He said John I've been skinny
• 1:39:26
  and I've been heavy. My voice never changed.
• 1:39:28
  It's not the same for everybody. I think you're going to be OK.
• 1:39:29
  So it's very yeah. But I feel like that's a
• 1:39:32
  personal thing. Like I feel like I was a little
• 1:39:34
  concerned that at once I got to a certain weight and size that I
• 1:39:38
  wouldn't be able to sound. I would sound, and I do feel
• 1:39:40
  like I do sound a little higher. But what I've noticed the
• 1:39:42
  difference is that my breathing's better.
• 1:39:44
  I have more, more use of my diaphragm than I used to.
• 1:39:47
  I can go longer stretches without dying from just like
• 1:39:51
  right now I'm literally dying because the booth is shut.
• 1:39:53
  I've been in here talking to you for an hour or so and it gets
• 1:39:57
  really hot and I'm wearing a jacket because it looks cool
• 1:39:58
  because I've got a cool thing going on here.
• 1:40:01
  But. Dude, if 330 lbs.
• 1:40:03
  You think I could, I would've been 20 minutes a bit.
• 1:40:04
  OK, interview's over. I can't live in here anymore.
• 1:40:06
  I'd be opening the door. Going error.
• 1:40:10
  I think there's something to that.
• 1:40:11
  Like I I've noticed over the last let me see, I've I've been
• 1:40:14
  training since May 2022, and that's around the time I changed
• 1:40:18
  to diet as well. And the voice acting since then
• 1:40:22
  has gotten a lot better, and I don't know if that's just
• 1:40:24
  because of constant practice or if it's maybe because.
• 1:40:28
  Of I feel like your health does have a big factor in it because
• 1:40:32
  breathing is such a big part of what we do and at a bad
• 1:40:35
  unhealthy weight, we're just even out of shape.
• 1:40:38
  Your breathing is not you'll be you'll be doing that so much
• 1:40:41
  more trying to get through dialogue.
• 1:40:42
  I remember that being the biggest problem is having to
• 1:40:45
  edit out breaths twice as long as I do now.
• 1:40:47
  Now I just have to worry about hiccups.
• 1:40:50
  Sorry. So it's it's one of those things
• 1:40:54
  where I could. I could instantly tell just
• 1:40:58
  based on watching old stuff I I did versus new stuff.
• 1:41:02
  Being able to do this with minimal.
• 1:41:04
  Having to suck air so much in my face.
• 1:41:06
  Being like it's a little red now because it's warm in here.
• 1:41:09
  But dude, after a it would be beet red, like it would be
• 1:41:12
  glowing like a tomato within a few minutes because I was just
• 1:41:15
  at such an unhealthy weight and I couldn't.
• 1:41:17
  Getting into clothes was. It was also very self-conscious.
• 1:41:20
  I was very insecure about my weight.
• 1:41:21
  I was very I had a lot of haters and trolls which just made me
• 1:41:25
  want to eat more instead of eating better.
• 1:41:27
  And it, you know, it's it's all just kind of compiled into
• 1:41:31
  affecting every area of my life, both personally and my career.
• 1:41:34
  So your physical health is so important.
• 1:41:36
  And I know I feel like I have the right to talk about it being
• 1:41:42
  like I'm not fat shaming anybody.
• 1:41:44
  I'm saying be healthy. That's it.
• 1:41:45
  I'm not saying be skinny, be ripped, be anything else, eat
• 1:41:48
  better because. And a lot of people ask me what
• 1:41:50
  my secret was. There is no real secret, I think
• 1:41:53
  that all of us know because we've been ourselves our whole
• 1:41:56
  lives. We all know what we should and
• 1:41:58
  shouldn't eat. We can tell based on what we
• 1:42:00
  eat, if that's good for us or not.
• 1:42:01
  I knew deep down that bacon and beef were bad for me.
• 1:42:05
  And dairy and all these. And sugar and eating, eating
• 1:42:08
  excessively, eating it late at night.
• 1:42:10
  I knew all this stuff. I didn't need anybody to tell me
• 1:42:12
  a diet to know those things. So I just started doing the
• 1:42:15
  right thing and I feel like most people know I shouldn't eat this
• 1:42:19
  or I should eat this. They just choose wrong and then
• 1:42:22
  they want to blame other people or look for some fast track way
• 1:42:24
  to lose weight when they've just been choosing wrong.
• 1:42:26
  I was like, OK, here's what you do.
• 1:42:28
  Stop choosing wrong and start choosing right.
• 1:42:30
  And don't look for fad diets. Just don't choose wrong anymore.
• 1:42:34
  If you're going to choose badly, pick two floating meals a week,
• 1:42:38
  not a day. Don't give yourself a whole day.
• 1:42:40
  Pick two floating meals a week that you can put anywhere in the
• 1:42:44
  week. You eat three times a day.
• 1:42:45
  Seven. That's 21 meals. 2 out of 21.
• 1:42:48
  Eat whatever the rest of the time.
• 1:42:50
  Go back to being healthy. Do not make it a diet.
• 1:42:51
  Make it a lifestyle change. That was the biggest thing that
• 1:42:54
  changed for me in my life. I completely agree with you and
• 1:42:56
  when I started looking in it more like, you know, food is
• 1:42:59
  energy, it's fuel, right? So obviously if you, you know
• 1:43:02
  same way like you could serve as a car, if you treat it with the
• 1:43:05
  cheapest stuff, the terrible stuff, it's not going to work as
• 1:43:07
  well, you know. There's a reason gas in the car
• 1:43:09
  it's going to freaking breakdown.
• 1:43:11
  Yeah, there's a reason you feel tired after like for instance, I
• 1:43:13
  have to be careful eating and I've switched to like whole week
• 1:43:17
  pasta stuff like that. But it's still, it's because
• 1:43:19
  it's pure carb. It's not really, Yeah.
• 1:43:22
  Doesn't give you much. Yeah, I had to get super
• 1:43:25
  creative, but I started noticing that a lot of people, they make
• 1:43:27
  low carb bread, they make low carb wraps, they make veggie
• 1:43:31
  noodles instead of pasta that's made with bread.
• 1:43:34
  There's so many. There's make.
• 1:43:35
  They make vegan Alfredo sauce or things that are made without the
• 1:43:38
  dairy that are much lower in fat, much lower in sugar or
• 1:43:41
  don't have any sugar at all. Those are things I I just choose
• 1:43:44
  different options. I mean, I'm not eating much
• 1:43:46
  different than I used to eat. But when I go to to example,
• 1:43:49
  when I go to get my, you know, my food, I'll get large waters.
• 1:43:53
  These are all waters, man. And they're free at this one
• 1:43:55
  particular restaurant. And I get a grilled, I get
• 1:43:57
  grilled chicken. Only That's it.
• 1:43:58
  I'm not going to get a full of sandwich if I do it or sandwich,
• 1:44:00
  I order as a lettuce wrap. I don't get the bread, I don't
• 1:44:02
  get the sauce, I don't get the cheese, I don't get the bacon.
• 1:44:04
  I just get the basic stuff. And what I started noticing,
• 1:44:07
  because this changed my life even more, I noticed that I was
• 1:44:09
  paying more money for less food, which made me automatically want
• 1:44:13
  to go to the grocery store instead and buy food for cheaper
• 1:44:16
  and eat the same things. Then I started realizing how to
• 1:44:18
  do meal prep instead and how to do portion sizes and how to kind
• 1:44:21
  of like space it. Like for example, yesterday in
• 1:44:25
  the morning I had 12 grilled Nuggets in a large water.
• 1:44:27
  That's 30, that's 30 something oz.
• 1:44:30
  And then there was like two or three.
• 1:44:32
  I don't eat closer than two or three hours together.
• 1:44:35
  Then I had another 12 grilled Nuggets and some water and then
• 1:44:38
  went on a no. I went on a hike in between and
• 1:44:41
  then had grilled Nuggets in the water afterwards.
• 1:44:43
  And then I did, went and did some more exercise after that
• 1:44:45
  for another good hour or so. And then I made myself some low
• 1:44:48
  carb chili that was literally just grilled chicken, 98% fat
• 1:44:51
  free chili, and added black beans to it.
• 1:44:53
  I put a little bit of vegan cheese on there.
• 1:44:55
  No extra stuff, no sour cream, no sauces.
• 1:44:57
  No, I put a little bit of crackers.
• 1:44:59
  That was my only cheat. But the way that I did that, I
• 1:45:02
  lost weight that way. And it's all about intake versus
• 1:45:05
  outtake. It's how fast that stuff stays
• 1:45:07
  in your system. And are you burning more
• 1:45:09
  calories in the day than you're eating?
• 1:45:11
  And I learned this. Guess who I learned this from
• 1:45:13
  Arnold Schwarzenegger over there.
• 1:45:15
  He's like, you just have to eat low calorie.
• 1:45:17
  You burn more calories than you eat every day.
• 1:45:19
  That's all there is to it. I'm like, man, that is so
• 1:45:21
  freaking simple. I don't know why I didn't think
• 1:45:23
  about that. So and here's the thing, some
• 1:45:25
  people don't have to cut their calories.
• 1:45:26
  Some people are having 600 to 1000 calories per meal, but
• 1:45:30
  they're burning that much because they're working out or
• 1:45:32
  they're just busy all day long. As long as your lifestyle
• 1:45:35
  balances out how much you're in, in putting and outputting,
• 1:45:38
  you're fine. But if you're stationary, if you
• 1:45:40
  get sick, if you're if you work at home in a booth all day long
• 1:45:44
  and you can't really get out. I got a treadmill.
• 1:45:47
  I got a freaking wake workout machine in the backyard.
• 1:45:49
  Now I got that from another voice actor because I just like
• 1:45:53
  I need to have an option. I can't.
• 1:45:55
  If you're stationary, you got to find a way to get the exercise
• 1:45:57
  in. If you cannot do exercise, then
• 1:45:59
  you have to be careful about how many calories you have every
• 1:46:01
  day. I didn't mean for this to get in
• 1:46:02
  a hole. No, it's.
• 1:46:04
  But it's directly related to my job.
• 1:46:06
  Because if I'm not healthy, I can't do this job.
• 1:46:08
  I can't. I can't do a video game.
• 1:46:11
  Sessions go to two to four hours long.
• 1:46:14
  That's really hard to do when you're 300 and something pounds
• 1:46:16
  and you're just waiting and you cannot freaking breathe.
• 1:46:18
  Sweating through my clothes and having to change my clothes
• 1:46:21
  three or four times in a session or just standing there in
• 1:46:24
  nothing but boxer shorts because I'm sweating myself to death.
• 1:46:27
  And this is something. I did these sessions at night
• 1:46:29
  when it's supposed to be cooler. It's just that hot.
• 1:46:31
  But if I was unhealthy or if I had heart issues or anything
• 1:46:34
  else, like I had high blood pressure, I had a list of of
• 1:46:37
  heart medical conditions in my family on both sides.
• 1:46:40
  There's a lot of things. I needed diabetes and I'd be
• 1:46:42
  very more, very careful more than most folks do.
• 1:46:45
  But it's something that people just don't pay as much attention
• 1:46:47
  to, especially in this business because we are grinding so much.
• 1:46:50
  We're so busy focused on this that we're just snacking and
• 1:46:53
  eating stuff while we're not really paying.
• 1:46:54
  When we're focused on this, it's a spectrum thing.
• 1:46:56
  We hyper focus. We don't pay attention to stuff
• 1:46:58
  around us and we could be. I turn around and I've eaten
• 1:47:00
  three burgers and a whole box of fries and I was like, I can't
• 1:47:02
  live that way anymore. I'm just literally just
• 1:47:04
  ballooning up and I'm killing myself.
• 1:47:06
  It's suicide by slows death, possible just eating myself to
• 1:47:09
  death eventually. So I just couldn't do that
• 1:47:11
  anymore. And now I'm half the size that I
• 1:47:13
  used to be. I'm still working on it and I'm
• 1:47:14
  not. I'm not skinny yet.
• 1:47:15
  I still got man boobs. You know?
• 1:47:17
  Can't get rid of those mubes without some surgery because,
• 1:47:19
  you know, I have what they call furniture disease when your
• 1:47:21
  chest falls into your drawers. I've.
• 1:47:25
  Never heard of that, but it's not a.
• 1:47:27
  Southern joke in America. But you know, I used to be a
• 1:47:32
  size 52 pants and now I'm wearing a size 34 pants, so.
• 1:47:36
  Congratulations, fans, you're proud of this I.
• 1:47:38
  Feel like that is probably like you said the the question was
• 1:47:41
  like what biggest life changed? And that that is that that
• 1:47:43
  changed. It changed my career for the
• 1:47:45
  better and changed my personal life for the better.
• 1:47:47
  Because if I'm not going to go into it, but I am under a
• 1:47:51
  tremendous amount of stress in my personal home life, a
• 1:47:54
  tremendous amount. More than anybody would ever
• 1:47:56
  understand. I would never talk about it
• 1:47:58
  during an interview because I have, for example, I have a
• 1:48:00
  mentally disabled son just for one, and he's a grown man, he's
• 1:48:03
  21 years old. But that's just a drop in the
• 1:48:06
  bucket of things that I'm not allowed to talk about.
• 1:48:08
  And if anybody understood how much they would be like, man,
• 1:48:11
  this guy's a really good actor because he can pretend that he's
• 1:48:13
  happy even though he's going through all this stuff and
• 1:48:16
  manages to keep his health decent enough.
• 1:48:18
  If I didn't keep my health, the stuff at home would kill me
• 1:48:22
  because I'd already be in for physical health that I would not
• 1:48:25
  be able to handle the physical, the the mental stress.
• 1:48:27
  So it all balances out. If you don't have a good
• 1:48:30
  physical health, your mental health will be messed up.
• 1:48:33
  If you don't have good mental health, your physical health's
• 1:48:34
  going to be messed up. Try to make sure that you stay
• 1:48:37
  healthy, because you can't do this job if you did.
• 1:48:40
  Hey man, it's all connected. I mean, you can if you had a
• 1:48:43
  eyed after you die, I guess, but it wouldn't be you though.
• 1:48:47
  It'd be some fake version of you that you didn't get paid for.
• 1:48:52
  Final question for you. Do you have any other company?
• 1:48:57
  You said an. Interview.
• 1:48:58
  I was like 30 minutes in and out, no big deal. 8 hours later,
• 1:49:03
  No. I guess I had to tell Church
• 1:49:05
  that I'm not going to make it this morning.
• 1:49:07
  It's OK do. You have any upcoming projects
• 1:49:10
  or final thoughts that you'd like to share with our
• 1:49:11
  listeners? I can talk about what if that
• 1:49:14
  just came out. It's now on Disney Plus.
• 1:49:15
  You can hear me in episode two and five.
• 1:49:18
  I'm not going to tell you where you just got to listen to figure
• 1:49:20
  it out. But yeah, that's it's really
• 1:49:22
  cool working for Marvel on something I'm actually allowed
• 1:49:24
  to talk about because there's so many things I'm working for
• 1:49:26
  Marvel. But as always, Honest Trailers
• 1:49:29
  comes out every Tuesday. They're I think they're going to
• 1:49:33
  be rolling back Honest Game Trailers to biweekly instead of
• 1:49:35
  weekly, but you can still hear them every Tuesday.
• 1:49:38
  And yeah, a lot of the other stuff.
• 1:49:40
  I'm just still like this past year though.
• 1:49:46
  You can hear me and I'm trying to remember them all.
• 1:49:48
  Street Fighter Six, System Shock, Lego 2K Drive, Evil Dead
• 1:49:53
  Game, Muppets. Mayhem, Animaniacs, all three
• 1:49:56
  seasons. I'm in there somewhere.
• 1:49:58
  And then this the what if as well.
• 1:50:00
  And also then there's a game, really great game out there
• 1:50:02
  called New World. I'm Father Russo and several
• 1:50:04
  other NPCS in that game and there's one that should be out.
• 1:50:07
  It's already in beta. It should be out anytime now.
• 1:50:09
  It's called Throne in Liberty, but that's a really that's going
• 1:50:13
  to be a big, fun, multiplayer open world, giant massive battle
• 1:50:17
  type game where you have like hundreds of players all fighting
• 1:50:19
  at the same time online, which sounds like a really cool
• 1:50:21
  concept. A new world's kind of like that
• 1:50:23
  as well. Those games are pretty popular
• 1:50:24
  for honors kind of like that. So I'm hoping, hoping that that
• 1:50:27
  one will do really well on top of all the other cool stuff that
• 1:50:30
  I'm getting to work on. But that's the stuff that I'm
• 1:50:31
  allowed to talk. So I can say that if you stay
• 1:50:34
  tuned to Disney plus that'll be a big thing sometime this year.
• 1:50:37
  I just no. That's so exciting.
• 1:50:39
  But I'm not allowed to talk about it.
• 1:50:40
  But you can already hear me on Disney Plus.
• 1:50:42
  I'm up. It's me.
• 1:50:42
  And And then what if so? It's been an absolute pleasure
• 1:50:46
  speaking with you, having you on the show.
• 1:50:48
  Thank you so much for like just sharing your knowledge.
• 1:50:50
  And your stories real? Real pleasure.
• 1:50:52
  Thank you so much. Big big fan of first class.
• 1:50:54
  Great job in that movie. So if anybody who doesn't know
• 1:51:00
  that's how we first met as I was randomly scrolling through live
• 1:51:02
  streams, I'm like, holy crap, it's long haired Michael
• 1:51:05
  Fassbender. Yeah, I've heard that one
• 1:51:09
  before. I was like, I bet you get that.
• 1:51:10
  All. Oh dude, I get told that, like
• 1:51:12
  60 to 70 different celebrities at any given time.
• 1:51:14
  I'm. Surprised you don't get people
• 1:51:16
  asking for pictures of you when you walk around.
• 1:51:18
  Town do you know this is what happens right.
• 1:51:19
  I'll tell you what happens people stop and stare at me Oh
• 1:51:23
  and I think I think what it is is they're like is that is that.
• 1:51:27
  And I sometimes I feel like going like I'm not who you think
• 1:51:29
  I. Am I would.
• 1:51:31
  It's not me. I would have been like this.
• 1:51:33
  I would have been like I'm doing stuff to make them think you are
• 1:51:37
  here. I don't know, because I remember
• 1:51:39
  one time I saw Bowling For Soup and they were playing, or was it
• 1:51:45
  Stacey's mum, which is not written by them, It's written by
• 1:51:49
  a band called Fountains Of Wayne.
• 1:51:52
  And before they played it, they were like, oh, so we've always
• 1:51:56
  been credited with this song. And you know, if in life you get
• 1:52:02
  credited with stuff that you know isn't actually something
• 1:52:05
  that you did, just own that shit, just take just take credit
• 1:52:08
  anyway. And then they just went into it
• 1:52:11
  this. Actually happened to me too.
• 1:52:12
  I was at I was in LA for one of the very first times and I had
• 1:52:15
  an auto auto Autobot hat on and there was a guy at the hotel
• 1:52:19
  that my manager put me up at that was getting breakfast and
• 1:52:21
  he had an Autobot hat on. And I said so I I can't remember
• 1:52:25
  exactly what I said, but I said probably said something.
• 1:52:29
  I hope you enjoy your breakfast and he's like and he saw my head
• 1:52:32
  he's like are you really the guy?
• 1:52:34
  I'm like, yes, yes. I.
• 1:52:37
  Hadn't even booked it before, but I I was like, sure, yeah,
• 1:52:40
  it's Hollywood. They're going to believe that I
• 1:52:41
  am. And you know I am now.
• 1:52:42
  So it's. Do you ever just use your voices
• 1:52:44
  to just fuck with people sometimes?
• 1:52:45
  Just be like, are you? Kidding me, What kind of voice
• 1:52:48
  actor would I be if I even though it was a Even when I
• 1:52:51
  wasn't a voice actor, I was messing with people over the
• 1:52:53
  phone through Dr. throughs. I held up a drive through for
• 1:52:56
  like 12 minutes, Christopher Walken talking about mayonnaise.
• 1:53:01
  And when I got there, there was nobody there.
• 1:53:02
  I just thought it was funny and I looked behind me.
• 1:53:04
  There was like 15 cars waiting for like, oh crap, my joke went
• 1:53:07
  too far. Now everybody's waiting for me.
• 1:53:09
  They had to literally go look and see what the ingredients for
• 1:53:12
  the mayonnaise was like. You do.
• 1:53:13
  Why? Why do people believe you?
• 1:53:15
  It's like you tell me what's in your mayonnaise.
• 1:53:19
  I want you to deconstruct. Sue asks what's in the What is
• 1:53:22
  the mayonnaise made out of? How do they not know that I was
• 1:53:25
  messing with them? I just don't understand.
• 1:53:26
  And then I got to the window. I did a completely different
• 1:53:28
  voice and they look at the other guy.
• 1:53:34
  Have you ever messed with a a celebrity whose voice that you
• 1:53:38
  can like do but they're not aware of I?
• 1:53:40
  Was working with. I got to work with Jason Momoa
• 1:53:43
  and not in person but directly. Like, we were digital, but we
• 1:53:47
  were there. And his son called and
• 1:53:50
  apparently they don't get to talk a whole lot.
• 1:53:51
  And he's like, hey, can you pretend to be Ryan Reynolds?
• 1:53:55
  So I was like, hi there. It's your Uncle Ryan.
• 1:53:58
  And he's like, freaking out. He's Facetiming it.
• 1:54:00
  But I'm not on camera. It's just like, it's just on
• 1:54:03
  that there's no picture. And like, I started go back,
• 1:54:06
  bannering back and forth with this kid and like and talking
• 1:54:08
  and he's mentioned something. He's like, you have no idea.
• 1:54:10
  Green Lantern is like, no, no, no, We don't talk about Green
• 1:54:12
  Lantern that that never happened.
• 1:54:14
  And then instead of telling his kid no, this is just the guy I'm
• 1:54:18
  working on working with, he does a great run.
• 1:54:20
  He kept talking. He never told him.
• 1:54:22
  He never told him. It was a joke.
• 1:54:23
  He really thinks that he talked to Ryan Reynolds now.
• 1:54:26
  And now I have this great story that I'm going to tell forever
• 1:54:28
  about how he franked his own kid and then never told him it was a
• 1:54:31
  prank. Brilliant, man.
• 1:54:35
  I'm definitely going to use my voice to mess with people in the
• 1:54:37
  future. It's very it's very therapeutic.
• 1:54:40
  It brings joy as long as you don't use your powers for evil.
• 1:54:44
  Very rarely. Never.
• 1:54:45
  Never. Only for entertainment and mild
• 1:54:47
  trauma, no. I know, I know that Don Law
• 1:54:50
  Fontaine back in the day when his voice changed and he just
• 1:54:52
  started sounding like the he said he had kids in middles
• 1:54:55
  because it's voice changed in middle school.
• 1:54:57
  So he sounded like, wow, in a world when he was in middle
• 1:55:00
  school, he said he would have been like, Johnny can come to
• 1:55:03
  school Today. He said he would call in sick
• 1:55:05
  for his friends and they would play hooky.
• 1:55:07
  I'm like you're using your powers for evil.
• 1:55:10
  No, I'd rate that man, that's brilliant if.
• 1:55:14
  I do that, I would. It's not that seeded for his
• 1:55:16
  Bureau, where he's just like, exactly what he said, but like,
• 1:55:19
  yeah, basically the same exact thing.
• 1:55:21
  Yeah, but except that Don was just a kid doing it himself.
• 1:55:26
  Oh yeah. Just again, a massive thank you
• 1:55:29
  for for everything. And yeah, I'm gonna make you
• 1:55:32
  feel weird again. Massive inspiration to me as a
• 1:55:34
  as a as a aspiring voice actor. Thank you so much.
• 1:55:38
  For the answer me on man, I appreciate it.
• 1:55:40
  And yeah, to all the listeners of the Christian Reef Podcast, I
• 1:55:43
  hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. 250 episodes,
• 1:55:47
  four years in, you know features looking bright and thank you so
• 1:55:51
  much for all your support for this thing for watching.
• 1:55:53
  If you want to support the show and help us out, make sure to go
• 1:55:56
  to patreon.com/christian Reeve. Subscribe there and you get
• 1:55:59
  access to the Life with Christian Reeve series and
• 1:56:02
  everything else that I do behind the scenes and just generally
• 1:56:05
  can support your boy in his pursuit of his dreams.
• 1:56:08
  And also, if you like this episode and other episodes that
• 1:56:10
  we do, make sure to go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google
• 1:56:14
  Podcasts. Wherever you listen to the show,
• 1:56:15
  leave us a rating, leave us a review.
• 1:56:17
  If you're listening or watching on YouTube, make sure to like,
• 1:56:19
  share and subscribe. It really helps us out in terms
• 1:56:22
  of growing the following, throwing us out there, reaching
• 1:56:26
  new people. Thank you so much for watching
• 1:56:28
  and listening.