auditioning

Mark is one of the most well-known and credited video game directors in the world, casting and directing actors in titles such as Warhammer, Tropico, Wallace & Gromit, Need for Speed, and so many more.  He's been at the forefront of the creation of the industry. and he's still a bit of a mad scientist: creating, tweaking, and pushing the technology envelope.  He has his own definite style and a deep love of the craft of acting.  We got to have a rare in-person interview with him, where he put us in separate booths so we could experience "the lab" that is his London studio OMUK.  This is what came out!
Randall Ryan:
You want to do a sync clap? Just like one, two, three? It'll just make it easier for me to sync the three feeds.
Gillian Brashear:
All at the same time?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. You're recording now. Do it now.
Randall Ryan:
Let's do it now.
Gillian Brashear:
Okay.
Mark Estdale:
Okay.
Randall Ryan:
All right, here we go. Three, two, one. Way to go, Mark. You didn't clap.
Mark Estdale:
Oh, you want me to clap as well?
Randall Ryan:
Yeah, all three of us.
Mark Estdale:
Okay.
Randall Ryan:
Three, two, one. Perfect. Close enough.
Mark Estdale:
Ish.
Gillian Brashear:
Nice.
Randall Ryan:
It's ish, it's ish, yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
Right. We're ready to roll here.
THEME MUSIC
Randall Ryan:
Mark Estdale is one of the more fascinating personalities in our industry. Over 25 years, he's directed more than 140 video game titles, including some very well-known franchises, Warhammer, Tropico, Need for Speed, Wallace & Gromit, The Witcher, and Tales of Monkey Island. He's an innovator who really pushes the technology envelope when it comes to casting and recording. Gillian and I had a rare in-person conversation with him at his London studio, OMUK, which he refers to as the Petri dish.
Gillian Brashear:
Mark Estdale, let's talk voiceover.
Mark Estdale:
Let's do that.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
And you're in the lab.
Randall Ryan:
We are in the lab.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
It's a bit of a mad lab.
Mark Estdale:
It is a mad lab.
Randall Ryan:
Mark, when did we first meet? Do you even remember?
Mark Estdale:
Fuck knows. I have no idea. It's a few years ago anyhow, so.
Randall Ryan:
Interesting conversation that you and I were having just a minute ago about how you got into this because ... Mark, hey, look at the guitars. Are you a musician?
Mark Estdale:
No. I play for myself. It's a meditation. I ended up messing around with music, which, fundamentally, has to do with being with people and doing interesting creative stuff. I think musicians have, people have a degree of competence and can produce music. I doodle and from doodling sounds happen. Connecting those sounds is another art form. I doodled all my life. And I went to run a studio for a record company and I brought my doodle tapes. I would get my mates into the studio. We would just experiment with stuff. It was the beginning of digital. The only music I was working with was experimental industrial stuff in the '70s and early '80s. And you were going out recording foundries and factories and noises. And then making tape loops and running tape loops in the studio and experimenting with all that kind of stuff.
Mark Estdale:
So the art of replacing sounds with other sounds was about cutting tape and doing all that kind of stuff. So, my deal was the studio. They paid me fuck all. When I wasn't in session, I had free rein of the studio to do what I wanted. So I just record staff and have friends around and some of the musicians, we'd just experiment with things. So I basically transitioned to another studio with my tapes. The owner of the record company went, I want to give you a deal. And I went, great. And then, suddenly, it became work. And all the pleasure went out of it. And I went blind in the sense of there's no way I can mix my own stuff. I can't direct myself as an actor. So I'm on a journey as an actor right now. So I'm doing training right now.
Mark Estdale:
But yeah, we did a single and it was great. Let's have the album. And it was just like nah, nah. It's too much light work and it doesn't come from the heart and out of the weirdness of it, but I'm still planning. So I've been building instruments and I bought interesting drums and things and just things that just got weird sounds. But the world has changed dramatically since my skill as an editor was with a razor blade.
Randall Ryan:
Razor blade, right.
Mark Estdale:
And then when digital came in, I got really into that early ... We were mastering to Betamax and things like that back in the-
Gillian Brashear:
Right.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
That was in the, I think that was the early '80s when that all came in. Then, my journey took me away from that. But I got into the whole music stuff that it was just farting about, trying to break things, trying to do things that were interesting. You wouldn't call it music per se.
Randall Ryan:
But the thing is that you produced. You produced albums, you produced singles, you produced bands.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
Well, I mean you did. And so-
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
I've talked about this before. Actually, one time, you and I were at Buca di Beppo in-
Mark Estdale:
What? What is that? Where is that?
Randall Ryan:
Well, it's this little place where they can ... Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
Somewhere in LA.
Randall Ryan:
D.B. Cooper had organized something.
Mark Estdale:
Oh yeah, that'll be in, yeah, that'd be in San Francisco.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah, so it was in San Francisco, right. You and I were talking about this at Buca di Beppo, which is the first time I knew you had anything to do with music. And you were talking about the band that you did and just how you were taking all these electronic pieces and parts and stuff and putting them together. And I just remember listening to that going, this guy's a producer. And that's probably, I'm guessing, somehow how you got to doing what you're doing now.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. Well, the thing is I came from performance originally. So, one of the things I got into was acting, but it wasn't really starting as acting. I was just a bored teenager on the street with a mate. We'd used to sit and watch people, then mimic people. The game we played was copy somebody and see how close you could get to them and copying all their mannerisms, just walking down the street. And it was just hilarious. We got more and more outrageous, making it bigger and bigger. And we would gather an audience. People would see us doing it than just stop and watch. And the person we were mimicking was completely unaware of it.
Randall Ryan:
That was going to be my question. Like, people started to come up going, do me?
Mark Estdale:
No, no, no, no. It was just us and about. But we had so much fun doing it and it was a real buzz from it. I was 15 at the time. And then, yeah, we started doing a bit of sketch stuff and I just loved it and I thought I really wanted to be an actor, but I'm deeply dyslexic. I got thrown out of school at seven. And it's a long brutal history that goes behind that. And one thing about acting was learning words and scripts. And I just, I can't do that.
Gillian Brashear:
Are you able to learn and memorize without reading it? Like just listening and memorizing?
Mark Estdale:
Nah.
Gillian Brashear:
No. Interesting.
Mark Estdale:
Nah, I can't even memorize what's in my own head. I'm an endless note-taker now. So I think on paper and on screens. But I love words. Being dyslexic gives me a, I think, a massive advantage in doing what I'm doing. Because in the studio I've learned that playing dumb is the blessed place to be. It's proven to be in a sense. I also get ill where I can't talk.
Gillian Brashear:
Really?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. I can't remember the name of the disease. But essentially, if I talk I get stomach acid in my lungs, which would destroy my lungs.
Gillian Brashear:
And so then physically, the ability to talk, it's shut down or you just-
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. So it becomes ... I get into a state of uncontrolled coughing because, basically, your stomach acid is eating in your lungs.
Gillian Brashear:
My gosh.
Mark Estdale:
So it's potentially a very, very dangerous disease, but it's just a tiny thing. So, if it starts, I start coughing, that agitates it, and it gets into a loop. So, fundamentally, I can't talk. So, when I first got ill, I was in the studio and I had to communicate completely nonverbally. So that was a really interesting learning space too, because it was all about body language and communication. And the studio was set up like a regular studio where the engineer is in the main position and the director is at the back or somewhere else. I prefer to be in the booth with the actor if I could, but I'm far too noisy. So the glass is a necessity. But then I realized having this level of intimacy where it's between you and I, and it's about that trusting relationship. And one of the things about not being able to speak is then to be able to communicate ... I became Silent Bob. All hand gestures, things gestures, but it became a really intimate way of directing. And just the performances that were coming out were just great.
Mark Estdale:
And I just thought, okay, director, shut up. And in the studio, it's that whole sense of you want the performer to perform. We speak 9,000 words an hour. And sometimes, especially when you're doing the advertising stuff, you'll have a team of people just chatting away in the control room. The actor's doing nothing. Or then the director is talking, talking, talking. You're actually paying the actor the most to do the performing. And the ratio between performance and chatter, there's a tendency to be more talk here than in there. And just from the fact of being ill, observing that process and going, okay, this is liberating the actor in certain ways. That was interesting.
Gillian Brashear:
That is interesting.
Mark Estdale:
I've learned to just ask those straight questions. So rather than directing somebody, being in control, doing all that background work, it's been in the moment and going, I don't understand this. So we work in the studio exactly like we are here now. We're all talking to each other. And what I do is have the writer in. I'll have currently those people on Zoom, which is horrible. But generally, there's a group of people here and the whole idea, this is a collaborative process. So there is no talkback button. It is always open. So you are coming into the studio space to do your part, but we're working as a team. And it's exploring together.
Mark Estdale:
So, my default for directing is not talking to the actor, it's talking with the writer or questioning the script in an esoterical way or just going, I don't really understand this. What do you think? I go, what do you think, and joining into a conversation and letting the actor take from what is being said what they think is necessary. It's a non-pressure thing. But actually playing the dumb guy in the space, to ask the stupid questions is the liberator.
Gillian Brashear:
It allows the space for things to happen.
Mark Estdale:
And I think that was the thing when you mentioned earlier about record production and all that kind of stuff. It never came to where I wish I was doing it now because I know so much more. But the one thing I really noticed was having the studio as a liberating space was the most important factor of getting a great performance. Like bands in rehearsal rooms, in their own space, can produce magic and be fluid. Come into a studio, that's that level of stress. Then you'll say, recording, that's another level of stress. So, I looked at everything down the line, which actually liberated that space, that stress. So for instance, the space here is a living room.
Randall Ryan:
Basically, yeah.
Mark Estdale:
It's a den. It's somewhere to come and feel at home and you want to relax in, you want to hang out in it to feel safe. It's breaking down those barriers. So for instance, the recording engineer is working like recorders on film set. They're out of sight. It's all about the action. It's all about living in the fluid space, without words into the moment of the game. They're absolutely in the game. It's about immersing them in the game.
Gillian Brashear:
What do you mean by that? That you're immersing them in the moment of the game. How do you do that?
Mark Estdale:
The one thing that you need to be connected to is the game. I always think artwork is a corpse, animation is a zombie.  An actor embodying the zombie, bringing it to life, is a fully realized character. So, all of those elements are really powerful. So with the game developers, say, they've been working on a game for five years. If you've not cast early, you are dealing with a team of people who have got a voice in their head. And every single person will have a different voice in their head.
Randall Ryan:
Yep, absolutely.
Gillian Brashear:
Mm-hmm.
Mark Estdale:
So you're competing against that.
Randall Ryan:
Absolutely.
Mark Estdale:
Well, the phrase that's used always is, fuck yeah. Casting is about fuck yeah.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
It's just like, yes, that character is fully alive within the orchestra of the ensemble. And if you cast early and the developer's going, fuck yeah, there is no doubt whatsoever about the character. There is clarity at that point. And then you can move that character in different directions. You may even want to recast it because it doesn't quite work within the context of the world. But what you have is a united vision, early, and that is so powerful because it influences the nuance of the writing. It influences the nuance of the animation. Every element is feeding each other. And by the time you come to record, you are already well ahead. And we want the actor engaged in that process, within those discussions that we have with the developer, so they're part of that process of developing a character.
Randall Ryan:
So, because the culture is so strong for casting late, doing all the VO late in the development of the game ...
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
... how do you get people to buy on to, hey, we need to do this now. Scripts aren't even written a lot of times.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, they don't. We don't need them to be written.
Randall Ryan:
You still buck up against the culture.
Mark Estdale:
We are the culture. Those ideas are the seeds. You are bringing in a master of character in an actor, somebody who knows how to interpret and to bring that character to life. You're bringing that level of craft and expertise into the team to weave magic within that team. You need to just talk about it like this and people go, oh yeah.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. But that's the way we roll.  The sausage factory of just churning it out at the end..hey, that is an opportunity to do magic beyond. So if we're working on a big plan, they're just throwing everything to the universe, and I'm working with an indie with no money. We can so outperform, outclass with so little.
Randall Ryan:
Absolutely.
Mark Estdale:
Simply because of the depth of engagement. And that depth of engagement costs bugger all. But it's a human engagement in a process and it's a creative journey you're embarking together. It makes a profound difference.
Gillian Brashear:
Absolutely. And it makes use of what actors do and have early in a process. It makes so much sense now listening to you ...
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
... that for the writers to be able to hear the words while they're still in the process of making it all, but actually hearing a character must inform the writing aspect in such a more rich way.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. We look at games that we've worked on that are ongoing franchises, which is a really good example is a game called Vermintide, which is a Warhammer game. And there are a bunch of player characters. And it's all about the interactions between those player characters. As soon as the actors came on board, the characters became fully alive. And over the years, each time we record, the actors bring feeds, the writing feeds, everything else, and feeds the humor and the humanity of everything. The way the dialogue works is really interesting as well, because it's not just straight dialogue, you're using buckets. So, conversations are actually built up.
Randall Ryan:
So you're randomizing some of the responses?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. But the way that the whole system here works is the actors are always working with each other in the booth, in that random space. We're not ensembling it because ensemble won't work in the situation. But they're always working off each other and adjusting, and everything becomes this fluid movement. So, the cast is now mature. The game is now six years on. But the writing has become funnier and funnier and more nuanced.
Randall Ryan:
So are you doing playback? Here's just some random playback for you to respond to.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. There's a thing called CDT. There's creative dialogue tools. And fundamentally, what creative dialogue tools does is connect any game asset to the script. So for instance, you've got this script in front of you. You can see here. So, you've got this bit of dialogue. And whatever's going on, it can be video, so you've got character scene, item video. So, anything visual is there. I don't need to explain that conversation to you. You know where you are. We also got the voices of the actors. Source that if it's another language. Spot effects, those are just things that may interrupt, like an explosion or a door slamming or a sonic interruption. Then you have ambience, which is the ambient noise of the thing. And then music. So all those layers are available instantly. So what the CDT does is connect all the potential game assets to the script, so the actors in the movement. So this one is just this scene here is you're in a bar. This is Randall. He's talking to Elaine.
Gillian Brashear:
Randall, you're talking to Elaine.
Randall Ryan:
Well. She was there. She bought me a drink. What are you going to do?
Mark Estdale:
So, you can just go in and act this straight away, but I've got the Randall line straight here. So you can go off, you're off.
Gillian Brashear:
I'm nervous since you're here. More like barracudas. Okay, good. ´Cause I don't.
Mark Estdale:
So she's straight into ... She knows the scene, you know the level, you know everything, you are utterly connected.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah, this is fun.
Mark Estdale:
Exactly. And that is the response. You're entering the roller coaster.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
So the actors are coming in just going, they just make choices and run.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
I was talking earlier to you about the neuroscience of this. This is where I'm super excited, but I can't really articulate much of it now. When I first started doing game stuff, one of the things I really noticed was you'd be really diligent and give actors the script in advance and they will study it-
Randall Ryan:
When you can.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, when you can.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Mark Estdale:
The actor will prepare and come in and do their thing with the context of the directors who knew the background work and got the choices and all that kind of stuff. But then if you gave the actor a side they'd never seen before and say, just go, oftentimes their very first read, it'd be just knock the ball out the park. And I was going, what is going on here? So I never ever give actors a script in advance. Never. It doesn't matter how intricate it is. There was this really profoundly personal dark journey a character had gone on. There's this monologue, long monologue. And I thought, this is one to give in advance, but I didn't. I decided not to. And he hit it in one take. And by the end of it, we were all in tears. And the actor didn't know what was coming. They didn't know what the next sentence was. They didn't know what they were going to expose about themselves. It was profound for us in the studio here. We just go, fuck yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
Mm-hmm. I think it's got something to do, when I listen to what you're saying, the element of discovery.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
And when the actor is allowed to discover in the moment, the reactions they're going to have are very fresh and real. They're not manipulated.
Mark Estdale:
When I first started experiencing this ability to just live in the moment, I was thinking about where in the real world does this kind of acting exist? In theater, it's within improv.
Randall Ryan:
It's improv, right, exactly.
Mark Estdale:
But an improv is part of devising, part of knowing…
Gillian Brashear:
Mm-hmm. Rules.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. However, in the real world where that improvised space is happening is when somebody's working undercover. So if you've got a cop who's working undercover, they are acting, they're being somebody they're not. And they have to survive in the world and their life is at stake. So that is improv extreme. Somebody from MI6 came down to the studio and couldn't talk about anything. But then he said, I would take it, I would take ...
Gillian Brashear:
It was a silent session.
Mark Estdale:
But what he said to me, he said, this is what we do, but for fun. And he's like, I can't tell you anything, but I can take you on a journey. And an interesting journey unfolded after that. That thing about living in the moment, I was really curious about how can you cold-read a script? Because somebody working undercover is total improvisation.
Randall Ryan:
Absolutely.
Mark Estdale:
Improvised theater is improvisation. But having a script and reading it, how come that works cold? And I was really curious about that. Basically, our brain is so much faster than we think it is. The thinking, speaking part is a linear element that comes from insane complexity. But if you think of the connections in the brain that are happening and firing at all times, if those connections were a ball of Christmas tree lights, that ball of Christmas tree lights would be the size of the known universe. That is the complexity and the power and the speed of our brain. We're coordinating everything at any one time. So you're trusting our humanity. The choices we make are always instant. If you go out on a date, and you prepare things, you just fall over yourself.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
Mm-hmm.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. But if you don't care and you relax and you yourself, you come out and it's enabling that to happen. There's a lot more depth to the neuroscience of it. One of the really exciting things that's happening in cognitive science is the merging of psychology, of neurology, of physiology in their language and understanding. The connection between that and what's happening in the scientific world about how the brain works is so exciting. And the thing is, actors have known the essence of that and have created their own language about how we function because they're questioning how we function.
Mark Estdale:
Anybody who studied acting or taught acting is looking about how do you become another character, how do we embody fully somebody we're not? And that's the essence of the heart of the craft of acting, but it's studying humanity from a creative point of view. Whereas the science, the cognitive world is thinking about exactly the same subject from a scientific point of view. And those two worlds are converging.
Mark Estdale:
Rizzolatti, the Italian neurophysicist discovered mirror neurons. And mirror neurons are those neurons that respond ... I think some 300 people or 3,000 people probably take me in a corner and beat me up for getting it wrong. But they are the things that ... They're our imagination. So if I tell you a story, you will have an emotional response as if that was real.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Mark Estdale:
I remember when I was at the Game On thing in LA and I talked about my fingers being broken.
Randall Ryan:
Oh yeah. Right.
Mark Estdale:
And the whole audience went ACCK!, you know what I mean? We learn from other people's experience.
Gillian Brashear:
Absolutely.
Mark Estdale:
And that is why theater is so wonderful.
Gillian Brashear:
That's storytelling in itself.
Mark Estdale:
It's storytelling.
Gillian Brashear:
Yes.
Mark Estdale:
The whole art of storytelling.
Gillian Brashear:
Right. That's why we do it. It's our shared consciousness.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
We're learning from your experience.
Mark Estdale:
Now science is beginning to go, oh, there's all these connections. So you've got embodied cognition. You've got a thing called 4E cognition. We're not just a brain in a head. We're a brain in a body. It's that physical connection. So, you get embodied acting. Then you get transformative acting, which is taking a step further. If you look into the relational stuff that Uta Hagen talks about what is the relationship between you and an object or your environment, really important. But this 4E cognition is about the cognitive process is connected fully to the environment, not just to head, not just to body, but it is external as well as internal. So, it's to do with spaces and containers, and containers is the thing I'm really interested in. That's when the new studio lab is going to be built, is looking at that research into containers.
Mark Estdale:
I can talk about this for hours and just go, because it is really interesting. But the fundamental thing is it's about how to liberate somebody in that moment. For an actor coming into the space, it's about being. One of the things I advise in auditions. You can hear when somebody's crafted it and reread something first. You can hear somebody living in the moment. You can hear when somebody's directed. You can hear when an actor is stuck in front of a microphone. It's a cage. I am caged. Because I keep moving off mic and you can hear it. That means it's a bad take. You will never give me a bad take. So when we're casting, what I recommend now is don't look at the sides, look at the character. Yeah, think about the context of who you are, what you are. Look at the context for the lines, not the lines themselves. Then cold read the lines, then press send. Without reviewing it, listening back or anything. If you fluff it, stop, start again. But keep that in and just give one take, send it.
Gillian Brashear:
I like it. I like that whole idea.
Mark Estdale:
Because it's about coming ... You're making a choice. So when I'm casting and having people in the studio, when somebody have made a decision, you have something tangible that you can flow with. And they've come in with a decision, you are throwing them into something and they're going with it. And then you can go, how about this? And they go, oh, different decision, let's go that direction. That's what I'm looking for in casting. That's all. Actors are coming to the booth wanting to please me.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Gillian Brashear:
Right.
Mark Estdale:
And it's just dead.
Gillian Brashear:
Yes.
Mark Estdale:
It's never going to happen. And it's what I call licking. People want to lick you. It's like uh-uh, make a choice, run with it and let's play. They're entering a playground. They're being a child. And that is what training really gives people, that ability to play and to be safe and have confidence. We get actors bouncing into auditions and it's just like, okay, let's play. It's always a learning experience. And they're less invested in trying to please. And the more they're embedded in being the better chance they have. And the tough thing is, the actors who are really experienced know that. But that's why we have these agent sessions, where the agent comes and sits in here and we'll discuss everything and do the same thing as if I'm directing a session, open mic, just mess around. Here's a scene. I go through these scenes here with the actor, throw them about and introduce them to it. And this is basically what I call a no-risk session. So, we have a very strict score system. Four is on the knows. Zero is what the fuck. So, fuck yeah to what the fuck. Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
So one is I don't give a fuck. Two is ...
Mark Estdale:
You could give a fuck.
Randall Ryan:
Could give a fuck. Three is fucking pretty good.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
The four levels.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, we could have the fuck scale. Yeah, we haven't thought of that. But I think, we actually do do that, having the fuck scale. The Randall Ryan fuck scale, that's what we're going to call it.
Gillian Brashear:
Four levels of fuckery.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, exactly. So, we'll zone people.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Mark Estdale:
To start with. So it won't go into refined. This will be a three, four or a two, three or a one, two, or a zero, one on their first take. That to me is meaningless. Because what happens, you are dropping somebody into the playground for the first time and they're going, do I like this, do I want this, do I embrace this? Then they go away and they think about it. And if they want to come back, they'll be a different person.
Randall Ryan:
So when you're casting with this, when you're doing things like that, is that either you're already thinking about casting them and so these are like call back auditions, because you probably can't do that with everybody, right, unless you have a really small number of people that you're calling from.
Mark Estdale:
We get people to self-take. The casting side's really important.
Randall Ryan:
Right. Of course.
Mark Estdale:
Because that score system exists. We have a thing called the casting matrix. I think I can bring up a matrix for you, which is terrifying because it's another sheet. Yeah, Google Sheets is wonderful as well.
Randall Ryan:
Do you realize this visual stuff is great for a podcast?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, that's perfect for a podcast. But it's fundamentally. So this is a casting sheet. This is sanitized so you don't see all the actors on it. Fundamentally, get their scores. Our casting briefs are really precise. And within it, there is a description of how to submit, what to submit. So we'll say things like don't slate your sample. So if an actor slates the sample, they don't get listened so they go straight to the bin.
Randall Ryan:
I've told so many people that exact thing. Thank you for saying that.
Mark Estdale:
Well, the thing is if somebody can't follow instructions when they want a job, how the fuck are they going to listen when they're on their job?
Randall Ryan:
100% agree.
Gillian Brashear:
Mm-hmm.
Mark Estdale:
So there are details within the casting submission, which adhere to or be damned. And the other thing is, so the way we look at the casting is each actor, if they're going to submit for multiple roles, their best score is going to be the average. So if they submit for one role and nail it, they've got top score.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. We've got some down here that submitted for a couple of roles. They've nailed one, but they submitted for three, and they're off the scale down here. They were four for one role, but they wouldn't be considered for that role or they wouldn't be the top choices for that role because their average was lower. And the reason we do this is, one, it's about self-awareness. It's also about production awareness. So when you submit, it takes at least 20 minutes to listen through to a sample. And oftentimes, when we're in casting, three people will listen to that sample and make notes. That takes time. Yeah. If you're carpet-bombing want to be hopeful and you'll say, oh, I'll go for this one and go, you are wasting our time. You may be brilliant and be able to nail them all, but get through your door on one is all you need to do because we can play once you're in production.
Randall Ryan:
Okay. So let me give you a little devil's advocate on that.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
So, unless you are doing one-to-one casting, one actor, one part, one part, one actor, even if you're submitting for roles that maybe you don't get, if you're submitting for something that you have no business submitting for, that's a faux pas. But you submit for that one role that, as you said, you nail. And then maybe you submit for a couple others, like they're okay, they're average, they would work if we had to work with them. Isn't there something positive to that if you are having to say, they're going to get that main role of rows, this actor is just perfect for rows? I can give them two other roles. I can give them an NPC. I can give them maid number eight.
Mark Estdale:
That's my decision, not yours. It's a production decision. So this is about getting through the door. You do a self-submission, submit your best. Because then, if we don't know you, we'll call you in and then we'll mess with you. We'll send you on a roller coaster. So we'll play around with that character because we want to see about adjustment. The self-tape tells you nothing. Some self-tapes, whether that actor can really do it, especially if it's somebody you don't know, it may have taken hours of crafting and all that kind of stuff. So, it's saying, yeah, this works, but I want to see it work under production conditions. If we don't know the actor, then we'll bring them into the studio, put them into production conditions. And during that exploration, we will explore other characters.
Randall Ryan:
Well, this is something you can do because of what you said, where you are getting casting done early. That gives you that luxury of that.
Mark Estdale:
But it's always pushing that casting time. Having casting time is ... Casting is king, is everything.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah, it is.
Mark Estdale:
We cast wide all the time. So, probably the casting backlog is about thousand actors right now within productions. We've got all these samples. So, Zach here and Nat are going through those building the database. So which is the matrix here, which is scored. So every sample gets a score. And the average score is the actor's in through the door score. So if they come in, they cast, they go, that is the role I want. If the actor is undecided because they're so brilliant, just come to make one choice. That is the message. Make a choice. Because if it's good, we will call you back for other stuff anyhow, even if you don't get the role.
Mark Estdale:
So this is statistics. And this also gives us statistics about the agent and every statistic tells a story. So, the average score from the actors then becomes the average scores to the agents. So we basically expect agents to do a lot of the work for us. So we will send the briefs to the agent. And if the agent is really hot, they know their talent, and they go, he'll be good for this role. Or she'll be great for this one. And they will send specific actors.
Randall Ryan:
And they don't give you 10 to show that they've got a bunch, which happens a lot.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. So some of our agents will just send us three samples.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Mark Estdale:
And they all go bang, bang, bang. They're in the bag. Oh, nice agent, good, saved us time. And others will get all the briefs come in. They just put it onto their website for any actor to put in whatever they want. And they just pipe it all to us and we'll get 100 submissions.
Randall Ryan:
Absolutely.
Mark Estdale:
Do we want to work with that agent? Do you know the production cost of dealing with that and waiting through that? And some of those samples will be shocking. So having the agents in here for these agent sessions, we talk about this thing. And so we are evaluating the agent as well as the actor. And if we get carpet-bombed, okay, they don't understand production and they're not putting their best foot forward. They're just being hopeful or hoping something will stick in there. And that ain't good practice. We don't want to work with those agents who carpet-bomb because it is wasting our time. It's making them look really crap. The data tells a story. So we know when an agent's carpet-bombing and there's no filtering.
Randall Ryan:
Do you try to train the agent at all?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. That's why we invite the agents down. So we've got two sessions this week with different agents. They're coming down from different agencies. So oftentimes, agents don't get to really know their crew, the actors. There's hundreds of actors on the book. And it's a real opportunity for the agent to get to know the talent, which they wouldn't normally get within the normal working day. And it's about us educating the agent, educating the actors. And that is the fundamental thing. And we find gems in doing that. So we have a massive database. Every single casting that comes through here goes onto a database. We have all the score and their average score over everything, and the notes. Every sample that comes in is an asset for the database. So there's tens of thousands of the data thing.
Gillian Brashear:
My gosh, it's incredible that you have time.
Mark Estdale:
But it means it's all at the fingertips.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
So for on a production side, you want that sense of know who you are as an actor. Put your best foot forward, what you think you're great for.
Randall Ryan:
Okay. So let me ask you something else then.
Mark Estdale:
Go on.
Randall Ryan:
So, let's just say you're precasting for a game. You've got a main role for something. And an actor submits for that. And they give you two different submissions for it that are radically different from one another. But they're making choices like here's one way I could play it, here's something else I could see. Or maybe the first one is, here's something that is absolutely in spec based on the brief. I have an idea on something else and I just want you to hear it. I mean, that's their thinking. They may not say that in the audition because they're just going to give you a couple of things. In your world, is that a positive, is that a detriment, could it be either?
Mark Estdale:
In my world, I would say it's a detriment.
Randall Ryan:
Reason being?
Mark Estdale:
Make a choice.
Randall Ryan:
What if they have, they've made two choices?
Mark Estdale:
They made two choices. Choose between one of them. Run with it. Yeah. What's your gut feel? Sometimes, they may want to go off the brief, fine. It is about conviction. Conviction carries.
Randall Ryan:
Okay. So if what they're doing is they're giving you one on the brief, even if they nail it, but the reason they give you the second one is because this is a little bit off the brief but this is what I feel. You would probably say, if you were the actor, give me the second one, don't give me the first, correct? That's the dilemma.
Mark Estdale:
It's not a dilemma. It's just make a choice and run with it. Because once you start building an ensemble, we want the brief to be precise. What actors submit expose a brief. Because if actors are submitting wild shit, we've got something wrong with the brief. But with the brief, yes, there are choices to be made. And you could go in different directions. And some actors will give me five variations, all of them wonderful. But again, that takes five times the time.
Randall Ryan:
It does.
Mark Estdale:
To do it, to review it.
Randall Ryan:
Unless you hear one and you're like, I don't care what else they did, that's it?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. We would never make that decision. So, a self-submission is that's interesting. All you need to do is pique my interest. Because the next stage is getting them in the booth and working with them. And then that is where the discussion opens up. It's just clarity of choice. It doesn't have to be to the brief. It can be, I've got this idea, I think this will be this and give it. Because what you see is choice momentum, life in the performance, it's there. And when something is fully alive and realized and vibrant that you go, that's interesting, I want to go that way. What I'm looking for is talent to work with. As we said earlier, there's 26 productions live right now. It's not just that one role we are casting for. We are casting all the time. And if somebody's showing stuff that's interesting, that interesting gets flagged. It's part of the pool for all the productions. They may not be good for that role, but they'd be great for this one.
Randall Ryan:
Right. And that happens?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, all the time. People will submit stuff and you go, ah, that's such a great performance, but it's just not right. And it's not just about the performance. You're building an orchestra. It's all about the group of actors. It's the ensemble that is what makes a piece work. And you want different tones and textures, pictures. You want color. It's like an orchestra. If an orchestra was all fucking violins, it'd be dead.
Gillian Brashear:
Right.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Mark Estdale:
It doesn't matter how virtuoso you are. You're looking for different instruments to give you the thing. So casting is not about the brilliance of your performance for that one thing. It's about that performance in relationship to everything else. But a great performance will always be noted. And it'll go into that resource for the casting team.
Randall Ryan:
So a technical question then on the way that you're doing your thing.
Mark Estdale:
Go on.
Randall Ryan:
Somebody gives a great performance, but it's not what you're looking for on that brief. They are possibly going to be scored something like a two.
Mark Estdale:
But if it's a great performance, it wouldn't get a two.
Randall Ryan:
Okay. So even it's like, they're not going to get this role, you're still essentially saying, by your scoring system, they got a three. Because even though it was a great performance, it's not what you're looking for in that role. Is that not how that would work?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. But three's good. They can nail it.
Randall Ryan:
I see.
Gillian Brashear:
You bring them in?
Mark Estdale:
I would bring them in and work them.
Gillian Brashear:
How do you deal with people across the ocean?
Mark Estdale:
We don't do any remote recording.
Gillian Brashear:
Interesting.
Mark Estdale:
Because it's all about this.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah. So people have to come here and record.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
For any of your jobs. Wow.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
Okay.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah. We won't remote ... Well, the thing is if it's one voice in something, then fine. I did one production in lockdown with actors all over the world. We were shipping out the same equipment to everybody. But the most expensive thing about a recording studio is the room you sit in.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
That's right.
Mark Estdale:
And ...
Gillian Brashear:
That's the toughest.
Mark Estdale:
... basically, people in their cupboards, under duvets, whatever, will sound different. And the thing is, you've got a disconnect. The actors are dealing with the technical as well as performance. Some actors are massively technical. Some of the best ones don't know what the internet is.
Randall Ryan:
That is correct.
Mark Estdale:
So the technical side of it, it's always a compromise, it's always a loss, it's always a degradation of what you can do. So we've made that in June last year. That's the way we roll. And we started mid-June, July last year back into full production.
Gillian Brashear:
Do people fly over for you?
Mark Estdale:
For doing stuff from the States?
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah.
Mark Estdale:
There's so many Americans over here now.
Gillian Brashear:
Okay.
Mark Estdale:
Now that was one of the thing is like 50% of our productions are US. And we are looking for studios to work with in the States right now. But we want to be able to plug them into our way of working.
Gillian Brashear:
You might have to go back and rebuild that studio again!
Mark Estdale:
Well, yeah, it still exists. Now, I'm not going to go and do that. We want to do it in a partnership thing.
Gillian Brashear:
So you're looking for a partner over there who can do something with the same type of setup and have the same relationship.
Mark Estdale:
But it's having a really great room to be able to do this. This is fundamentally my playground. And the research element of it I'm doing. You are sitting in the Petri Dish. Everything you do is noted. And so, why does that work, why does ... I've done this for decades. And you notice patterns and you see things and you're going, okay, I'm going to change this and I want to be able to take that further. Now I'm understanding more of the science. The science has caught up with the acting. So the dialogue is now current and live between the cognitive sciences and performance. And it is the most exciting. There's three great books on the subject. The one that really got me is a guy called Dick McCaw. He did a book called Training the Actor's Body. Originally, I thought the most important element in performance is one of the things I watch in casting is the physicality. So, how an actor physically enters a character. You can't do it with a 416 in front of you or a U87.
Randall Ryan:
Well, you can but-
Mark Estdale:
You can but you are caged. You're in a cage.
Gillian Brashear:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You're doing this and working with them.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, yeah. You can do it wonderfully, animation there. The common practice is to do it in a cage.
Randall Ryan:
Right, right.
Mark Estdale:
But when you release the beast, holy fuck, you get something different.
Randall Ryan:
So another technical question. This mic, small capsule.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
How are you getting the depth?
Mark Estdale:
Okay. So, it's a 4060, it's a DPA.
Randall Ryan:
Okay. But what's the technology that makes this give that bottom menu and all that stuff that's around 180 hertz that sometimes you're rolling off, but if it's not there and those harmonics aren't there, you lose that.
Mark Estdale:
You are listening to a voice. For me, performance is a voice in an environment. So, what we want is something that's natural and neutral. That is the focus. Every mic colors.
Randall Ryan:
Absolutely.
Mark Estdale:
And you want a constant coloration. So, there's a distance, the way the mic is placed and everything. We've researched this forever. And it's like working that mic where it is, is like working at U87 at a meter. But you need a good room for it. That's another side of it. And-
Randall Ryan:
So its polar pattern is a little more omni?
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, they're omnis. So, I want a really natural sound to it. And the other thing is the more performance capture you're doing, you've got mics attached to people. Yeah. And they're using these mics on the stage. So the performance capture stage we're building is going to be just a very big sound studio. But it's going to be one that's going to have controllable acoustics because I want to put orchestras in there as well. But it's having that playground because when their new studio comes, to be able to connect all the different rooms in the different environments, that means we could do some really crazy shit. And the crazy shit is something that tickles me.
Randall Ryan:
You realize you can't die because you've got a good 50 years' worth of ideas here.
Mark Estdale:
Oh God, yeah. I know I can't die.
Gillian Brashear:
I got to say ...
Mark Estdale:
But it's ... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gillian Brashear:
Your spirit of experimentation, I applaud. That you're constantly curious and experimenting to get to a more refined connection and truth. I really appreciate that.
Mark Estdale:
I guess so.
Gillian Brashear:
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Estdale:
Yeah, so it's ... Yeah. You only have one life.
Gillian Brashear:
Mm-hmm.
Mark Estdale:
And it's like, if we don't enjoy our craft and what we do and can't be supportive in each other's shit, what the fuck's the point?
Randall Ryan:
I'm kind of with you.
Gillian Brashear:
I agree. I agree with you fully. Randall?
Randall Ryan:
Gillian?
Gillian Brashear:
All right.
Randall Ryan:
Sure.
Gillian Brashear:
Thank you so much, Mark.
Mark Estdale:
Thank you for being here.
Gillian Brashear:
Mark Estdale, it's fantastic.
Mark Estdale:
Thank you. It's lovely to have you in our day in the Petri dish.
Gillian Brashear:
Oh, my gosh.
Randall Ryan:
I already feel a little more moldy. My cells are dividing as we speak. I don't know. Maybe someone can pull Mark out of his shell someday, right? I really enjoy hearing his perspective and it's a joy to feel the passion that he's got for creativity and really just for our industry. Let's Talk Voiceover is hosted by Gillian Brashear, actor, director, visionary, and me, Randall Ryan, owner of HamsterBall Studios, delivering the world's best talent virtually anywhere. And I can also be found at thevoicedirector.world. You got comments, questions, or just want to let us know what you think, reach out at info@letstalkvoiceover.com. Find us at all your favorite places, GetPodcast, iTunes, Stitcher, Apple Podcast, Podbean. If there are podcasts, we're probably there. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk again real soon.
 

Sometimes you're having so much fun that a podcast pops out. That is what happened when we talked with Misty Lee. Misty is an awesome voice actor who is also an awesome magician. Yup. Really. As a lifelong performer, Misty talks honestly about the privilege of being a voice actor. And with a track record of success that includes Ultimate Spider-Man, Grand Theft Auto V, The Last of Us, Star Wars Battlefront, Disney Infinity, and more, Misty helps to remind us all how wonderful and magical this business really is. Invest your time to listen to Episode 33 and you'll walk away with a smile and incredibly valuable advice that's hard to find anywhere. 

Mark Oliver is a voice acting badass who does what he does in film, animation, and videogames. From Wood Man in the Mega Man animated show to Batroc in the Marvel Video Comics to Miles Dredd in the Max Steel franchise, and roles in Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord Of The Rings Online, Mark has a fascinating background as a professional musician, actor, and film director. He talks about being authentic, and the advantages you can find by engaging in life to find your motivations. Take a lesson from a voice of experience, and check out this episode with Mark Oliver!
Brian Talbot:
Have I offended you yet?
 
Mark Oliver:
I don't think of myself as being... I'm not easily offended.
 
Randall Ryan:
But, well if that's a goal, I mean, we can make that a goal.
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
Then throw the gauntlet down before you gentlemen.
 
Brian Talbot:
The gauntlet has been laid down. Yes, I will meet that goal. I absolutely freaking will. Ask anyone who's listened to more than three of these shows, they'll tell you.
 
THEME MUSIC
 
Brian Talbot:
As the grandson of German film pioneer, David Oliver, you might say that Mark Oliver was born into the business. While not exactly true, the apple sure didn't fall far from the family tree. You see, Mark Oliver is a voice actor, known for his portrayal of the sinister Lord Garmadon in Lego's Ninjago. Vancouver-born and UK-raised, Mark has become a common sight around the animation world. From Wood Man in the MegaMan TV series to Batroc the Leaper in the Marvel Superhero Adventures to Monstrux in Nexo Knights, Mark is a signature badass, both on TV and in video games. Some of his narration work includes Smithsonian's Hell Below and National Geographic's Hitler's Last Stand.
When he's not working in the studio as a voice actor, Mark spends his time working as an independent filmmaker, and his experimental short film, Elvis: Strung Out, received first prize at the International Festival of Oberhausen, Germany. And then to bring this all full circle, his latest film project is a feature-length documentary on the career of his grandfather, German silent film producer David Oliver. Lots of creativity going on here. So, Let’s Talk Voiceover, Mark Oliver.
 
Mark Oliver:
Yes, let’s.
 
Brian Talbot:
Thanks for being here. Thanks for spending a little time with us. How fun!  A lot of our guests and a lot of the people we talk to are voiceover through and through, and while that's a fabulous way to make a living, my gosh, how fun is being an independent filmmaker?
 
Mark Oliver:
Well, it's all fun, and I see all of these things as being intimately connected. I mean I started as a film historian at school, and I guess that came as a consequence of being interested in my family's filmmaking legacy. So I really see, I really don’t see any division between any of these different areas of endeavor. Of course, I love voice acting. When I came back to Vancouver after living in New York City, someone said, "You love getting wasted at parties and doing all those crazy voices. Why don't you pursue that as living?”
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
… and I said, "Well, forget it because it's obviously a closed shop. It's going to be like trying to get signed up by the Freemasons or something.” But…
 
Brian Talbot:
There you go.
 
Mark Oliver:
… I asked a few people, and they made a few suggestions. I made a demo just using my own gumption, trying to figure out, well, what would people want? Some versatility, some variety. And I find that voiceover is immensely rewarding. It's like getting paid to go in and do your own primal scream therapy or something. When you're an on-camera person, you never get given the variety of roles that voiceover will present to you. And indeed, there are no laws at all governing how big these characters can be, and they're usually much larger than life, and I find it very gratifying to be able to, um, engage all of my imagination in the rendering of these different characters.
 
Brian Talbot:
Well, that is what makes it really fun. Because on camera, obviously, your physical attributes are the primary determination of what your character is or what kinds of characters you can be; unless the director's willing to stretch the traditional or the precast notions of what that character looks like. With voiceover, you truly can be anything, and that's the fun part of it all.
 
Mark Oliver:
Well, it also, it's ironic because we live in the midst of this extreme age which is so visually dominated, but sound is still such a mysterious component and affects people subconsciously in a way that they can't even put their finger on. Or, as I say, sound is like the,  the thief that comes through the basement door of the imagination and affects people in an extremely provocative fashion. So I'd like to think of this endeavor of voiceover as being a revenge against this era that is determined 98% of the time by visuals. I mean, my God, if you could divorce the voice of Kim Kardashian from the image of Kim Kardashian, and just think, my God, who could this person be listening to this vocal fry? …
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
…like what does that tell me about this, this person? So I think about it a lot, and I have the luxury of being able to disappear into these different mediums. And I like to think that it gives me a fresh perspective when I return to the voiceover studio and attack this, that, or the other role. So you're correct.
 
Randall Ryan:
So when they told you that you could do voiceover but you could not continue to get wasted to do it, how close was that to a deal breaker?
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
You know you have to do these things carefully by stages…
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Brain Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
…so it took about six months. (Laughing) No, I thought it was fine. I mean I should clarify that I come from a family where language is really deployed by most of the people in it to make a living. I mean my father was a criminal lawyer of renown and became a judge of the Canadian Supreme Court and was really one of these kind of Perry Mason figures who very entertainingly was able to sway juries because of his command of the language. It was always a huge, huge thing, not even what you said so much as the musicality or cadence with which we were able to try and convey this, that, or the other point to win an argument.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right sure…
 
Mark Oliver:
So, so I think that was my jumping off point. I wasn't somebody who was a trained actor, was frustrated with an on-camera career and then thought, "Oh, I'll investigate voiceover." It's completely satisfying,  without having to think about anything else. So I think I might have had a bit of an advantage, as I say, coming from this background where people could so deftly manipulate the English language to convey a point, win an argument, that sort of thing.
 
Randall Ryan:
Well, sure, if you grew up around that, I'm not an actor, but I had the same thing with my family where I grew up around all these people who, ultimately when they got older, they were salesman and politicians. My father ended up being a lawyer as well. That side of the family would get together, and they were really big on trading insults and arguments and it was all very happy.
 
Brian Talbot:
So it was like an adult sitcom-
 
Randall Ryan:
It was like an adult sitcom.
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
.. who were the Simpsons before The Simpsons.
 
Randall Ryan:
You had to learn how to speak and protect yourself or else you were just going to get run over.
 
Brian Talbot:
So what was the plan before that, Mark?
 
Mark Oliver:
Before all that?  I mean I was a, you know, scrappy kid who cut my teeth in the punk rock scene here in Vancouver and was in a number of bands.  And…
 
Brian Talbot:
Well, that explains the drunkenness.
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
That partially, partially explains it. And we'd had the good fortune of being selected by The Clash to open up for them on their Combat Rock tour, so we did a couple of shows opening up for The Clash. And you know once you get in front of 8,000 to 10,000 personal audiences, you're not going to go back to anything else. So I took care of everything here, wrapped up business, and you know moved to New York City. I guess I wanted to be eyewitness to what was going on in the world of hip hop in Manhattan. So I got to New York City around the summer of '84, I guess it was, and got into an R&B band based in Philadelphia, of all things, which was really cool because that was its own kind of university going from like the punk rock world of like, "Yeah, man, just wing it," to "No, man, you're going to like stay and you're going to rehearse these harmony vocals…
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure..
 
Mark Oliver:
… till four o'clock in the morning or however long it takes to nail this shit.”…
 
Randall Ryan:
Yep.
 
Mark Oliver:
So you know I met all sorts of people in the music world in New York City and Philadelphia…
 
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
 
Mark Oliver:
…you know  I'd be walking down the street and someone would introduce me to a Delfonic or a Stylistic or something like that. And I loved that. I also loved the way that people were using language. It was so romantic and so expressive. So it's not like I,  I had to sort of stay close to whatever influences I picked up from my family. I realized I loved everything about language and the musicality of it. So,  I did okay and had some gigs doing backing vocals on people's records and stuff like that. But it was a tricky time to be in New York City through the '80s. It was a pretty hard-scrabble existence. Various things happened that meant I just couldn't live in New York City anymore.
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
 
Mark Oliver:
I came back to Vancouver around '97, which is when the drunken voices at parties started to really become...
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
…“I have to focus on these drunken voices (laughing) if people are going to take me seriously." And I attended a seminar as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival where people were demonstrating how to do these voices for animation. And there was a sort of a Q&A, and I looked at what people were doing. I thought, "Well, this doesn't seem too exotic. It's not too much of a stretch from being wasted at parties and doing this stuff for free." So I thought, "Well, why not?" I wasn't intimidated by studios…
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
… because you know I'd cut tons of demos and tons of records already, and you know was comfortable with going off, just leaving.
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
 
Mark Oliver:
So it didn't seem like too much of a stretch. When I showed up to my first session, 90% of the people in the room turned around and said, "Well, who the fuck are you?”
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
…Because I just sort of arrived.
 
Brian Talbot:
So it was a welcoming crowd. That's very nice.
 
Mark Oliver:
Yes, such a welcoming embrace. Because I was there doing this principal character, I'm sure everybody in that room would've thrown their hats into the ring to get that role, but here was this total stranger being a king of a planet in outer space. And um I'd like to think that I equated myself with aplomb in that environment, but I also had wonderful people to observe and study from, so I was able to learn a tremendous amount from just the very talented people who were working around me.  They're still my colleagues to this day. You know since that time, I realized, oh my God, I have to take this thing seriously. It's not a party trick anymore…
 
Brian Talbot:
Right…
 
Mark Oliver:
… This could be a real thing. I looked at my first check and I thought, "There's got to be some mistake in accounting.” They couldn’t possibly…
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
….they couldn't possibly pay this amount of money for what we did. We were just goofing around.
 
Brian Talbot:
For what I did? Are you kidding me?
 
Mark Oliver:
We were just goofing around. And people assured me like "No, that's pretty much par for the course." And since then I had to really kind of conduct forensic research into the kind of voices that we use on a regular basis and certainly many other voices that, if they didn't already have a presence in animation, could quite possibly sometime in the near future. This was really before people had fast internet so that meant like…
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure
 
Mark Oliver:
… going to the libraries and studying regional voices and dialects and accents. And I realized I was just already interested in that…
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah
 
Mark Oliver:
… I loved it. I realized I'd found my métier. So you brought up a really good point about when people ask you like, “Yeah, you know think about playing that game, that voiceover game.”
 
Brian Talbot:
How do you get into it? You become a student of it. That's the best advice I can give them is become a student of voiceover. So if you're going to play golf, then become a student of golf, understand everything about it. You want to be an actor, go become a student of acting. Figure out everything about it. You know all the same actors are in the Scorsese films. All the same cast members go from one Coppola film to the next Coppola film. So all these guys get their troops of people, it's like small theater troops, and they work with them because they know how to work together, and that becomes incredibly, incredibly valuable. That was something that I started doing when I started acting, and especially doing indie films and stuff like that. I found three or four core groups of people of writer/director/videographer teams that I could work with from project to project to project. That was just simply a result of becoming a student of what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And that's exactly what you were doing at that point in time.
 
Mark Oliver:
Yeah. I wasn't rolling my eyes contemplating all of the homework. I just kept returning back to the thought, "Oh my God, the English language is fascinating.”
 
Brian Talbot:
Isn't it though?
 
Mark Oliver:
It fascinates me. It fascinates me. I’ve been, I was very lucky, when I was in New York City, I had any amount of friends from the South who'd say, "Well, you should come down, come down  to Tennessee for a week." And I would go down to Sewanee or be around Chattanooga and just to collar people on the street in a town or whatever. You'd be like, "Do you mind repeating what you just said?”…
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
… Not because I couldn't understand it the first time around, but it was just so beautifully delivered in such a lazy cadence. I just thought, "Wow, the United States is amazing. It's just a universe of voices." I'd think to myself, this is long before I got involved in voiceover, and I thought, "I'm going to file that away for future reference." I don't know why. And lo and behold, the opportunities arise where you can deploy that knowledge.  When people ask me what to study, it's never been easier because you have YouTube, you have Vimeo.
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
 
Mark Oliver:
…and I never really,  I don't really like to watch movies. I mean, I will, for references and stuff like that. But I find it to be a bit of a cheat. And if you wanted to craft something unique or something that belonged to you, then I'd rather be on the streets of Austin or whatever talking to people and not listen to Tommy Lee Jones.
 
Brian Talbot:
Matthew McConaughey trying to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
Mark Oliver:
Yeah, yeah,  that sort of thing. Side note, my dad, during the war, he worked for British Intelligence where he worked in a branch of MI5. And he spoke five languages fluently.
 
Randall Ryan:
Oh, my.
 
Mark Oliver:
He would be charged with the responsibility of apprehending SS or Gestapo men who are on the run with assumed Wehrmacht identities and have to spirit them through the different sectors of Berlin, French-held Berlin, Russian-held Berlin, etc., etc., to get them back to British-controlled Berlin. So that meant that he would have to slip in and out of different voices and accents and languages to do that. And so I was very lucky to have somebody like my father. He regarded all of this pursuit as, how believable do you want to be? You are being parachuted 10 miles behind enemy lines, and you must be able to pass unnoticed by the local populace…
 
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
 
Mark Oliver:
…So I take all that sort of stuff very, very seriously. So I don't know whether people, when they listen to cartoons, for example, consider that I and many of my other colleagues approach all of this kind of forensic research with tremendous seriousness just to be able to give you a really compelling talking tomato, for example.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
Well, I think that's a really important point. The other thing that people do is, "I do a bunch of funny voices. I want to get in voiceover. I can do George Bush, 'Not going to do it.'" Well, no, that's Dana Carvey's impersonation of George Bush…
 
Brian Oliver:
Yeah.
 
Brian Talbot:
…So you're not doing George Bush. You're doing Dana Carvey doing George Bush. Now, if you had your original spin on it, and it was really, really good...
 
Randall Ryan:
Right
 
Brian Talbot:
..and oh, by the way, most people don't need impressions of other people. They need their own original characters. You know I was listening to someone not too long ago, and they're like, "Oh, I've got this voice, and it's this alien character, and so I'm going to do Marvin the Martian." No, no. That's someone else's character. That's not your original take on what it is.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right
 
Brian Talbot:
 That becomes so important in being able to not only book work, but be authentic and be convincing and really make that character yours.
 
Randall Ryan:
Well, and that's one of the things that concerns me about some of the things that I see with internet casting and with people thinking that they can do this on their own is that type of lack of creative thinking. I have this stereotype in my head, and so that's what I'm looking for, and that's how I'm going to direct, or that's what I'm going to ask the actor to do without allowing that actor... Especially, I'll say this about Mark, you have done some of the best villains for me, period. Because they're not just villains. They're complex and textured.
 
Brian Talbot:
Not just badass, but scary badass.
 
Randall Ryan:
Exactly,…
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah yeah
 
Randall Ryan
…just that psychological. Even if the script isn't really totally written that way, just that ability to dig in and get that. That's coming from you. That's not coming from me. It's not even coming from the writer necessarily. It's coming from allowing you to bring that piece to yourself. That's one of the things that really worries me with some of the trends that I'm seeing once you take out those people that understand what acting is. And I'm saying more on this side of the glass than on your side of the glass.
 
Mark Oliver:
Well, first of all, thank you for the kind and completely misplaced compliment.
 
Randall Ryan:
Yeah, right.
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
No, no. Well, now I know what kind of estimation I have to live up to next time, so the stakes are raised. Thank you.
 
Brian Talbot:
You just raised the bar. I hate that.
 
Mark Oliver:
You raise the bar. But it's true what you say. Because I talk to students and they feel safer choosing to be a facsimile of George Clooney or a facsimile of this person and the other person because they confuse that with a degree of professionalism and that these people, because they are famous actors, have a kind of a currency and value. Therefore, I, by extension, must as closely as possible approximate their voices. I say, no, because then you're never going to stand out of the crowd. As an actor, I really don't like being confronted with sort of sound alike projects.
 
Brian Talbot:
Oh, I hate those.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, those are the most annoying things. My favorite answer, and I've yet to use it, but one of these days I will: "Yeah, we're looking for a Sam Elliott." "Well, you know you can call up Sam's agent and he'll put you in touch, and you can book Sam. If you're really looking for Sam Elliott, then he's available. He's alive. He's still working. You know go get Sam Elliott.”
 
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
Well, it could be laziness on the part of the casting person or the producer. I really don't know. Or…
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah
 
Mark Oliver:
…that people just don't have adjectives at their fingertips to properly describe the characteristics that they're looking for.
 
Randall Ryan:
I think you've hit the nail on the head with that. They don't. I've sat in on other people's sessions, or I've been hired to do it, but they really don't want me to direct. So I'm listening to some of these people who don't do this, and I'm listening to these people that don't have reps, and they also don't have the imagination to do it. They don't know how to tell somebody what they're looking for, and it is exactly that. They don't have the adjectives. They don't have the stories. They can't get down to the musicality and to the kernel of what it is they're looking for. All they can do is shortcut it to “Um, yeah we're looking for something that sounds like Morgan Freeman. We're looking for something that sounds like..." fill in the blank because that's all that they can imagine. That's where you get the stereotypical read. "Well, we're looking for a villain, so [inaudible 00:20:27]. Like, "Ah, no.”
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing) I like that villain. That was an awesome villain. That was just-
 
Mark Oliver:
I worked on a religious-themed project.
 
Brian Talbot
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
Within this, within the stories, there's the character of Satan that they were trying to cast. I thought, "Well, this'll be fun. I can really sink my teeth into this…
 
Randall Ryan:
Umm hmm
 
Mark Oliver:
…challenge”, so I showed up for the casting, and I felt I was prepared. They said, "Mark, whenever you're ready, go." And so I started, and I didn't get past the second sentence before the casting person stopped me and said, “Um what's your name?" "Mark. Mark Oliver." "Mark?" "Yeah." "I don't know whether you got the memo, but um Satan in this story is the bad guy.”  And…
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
he said it like a bad guy, "But the way it's coming out, the way you're doing him is, well, frankly, he's kind of sexy. Did we tell you that he was the bad guy?" I said, "Interesting observation. Well, I'm just going with the whole thought that Satan is a very seductive, attractive character.
 
Brian Talbot:
Thank you.
 
Mark Oliver:
Because he is so attractive, he will bend people to his will and get people to do a lot of things that they normally would feel very uncomfortable doing. Do you see where I'm going?" They're like, "Yeah. Did we say that he was the bad guy?”
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
I know and at the end of the day, they went with, [inaudible 00:22:00].
 
Brian Talbot:
Right, of course.
 
Randall Ryan:
Oh, man.
 
Mark Oliver:
... which is a very two dimensional-
 
Brian Talbot:
I was going to say, can we strip all the depth out of it?
 
Randall Ryan:
Have you seen Good Omens? Now, I know it's based on a book, but David Tennant?
 
Mark Oliver:
Yeah.
 
Randall Ryan:
That's brilliant because the lines are blurred, and the people are not two dimensional.
 
Mark Oliver:
Well, of course. I mean, you can go back to Milton's Paradise Lost, and the character of Satan is extremely attractive…
 
Randall Ryan:
And complicated.
 
Mark Oliver:
.. and complicated, which makes him far more provocative. So you think about what the struggle of good against evil really means as opposed to just being presented with a kind of cardboard cutout. It's a fascinating industry, and it's changing all the time. My God, I'm dazzled by the new types of stories that can be brought to the screen. I guess I'm waiting for the paradigm shift in storytelling as we experience it through episodic drama to make itself felt in the world of animation. I wonder if that's too much of a stretch. What do you think, guys?
 
Randall Ryan:
Hmm.
 
Brian Talbot:
I think we're well on our way. With all the adult animation that's out there, between the cartoon fun stuff, Simpsons and Family Guy and all that kind of pushing a comedic edge, and then of course all the manga and Japanese animation and then you have the animation networks or the comedy networks that are really heavy into the adult animation stories, I think that there is so much room for it. I think we're also much more willing to accept animation in place of live action to be able to enjoy storytelling, and I think the viewers are much more willing to accept that nowadays.
 
Randall Ryan:
Well, the lines are definitely blurred. I mean…
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah yeah.
 
Randall Ryan:
…you now have all kinds of things where actors obviously are in there, but sometimes it's even the digital representation of the actor. It's a very short period of time before your mind just accepts it. You stop looking at what's CG, what's real. It's just all blends and it's all seamless. Then suddenly the panther is really a character.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah.  What are you seeing, Mark? I mean you're in the middle of it. Are you seeing scripts and stories change?
 
Mark Oliver:
Well, I think that, to be perfectly honest with you gentlemen, I see a degree of trepidation on the parts of producers because it's becoming increasingly difficult to read the tea leaves of popular culture and where it's going. Are we going to see more and more shows that kind of target a niche audience? It's certainly difficult to find the kind of successes that have a universal appeal. For example, I don't know whether we could ever enjoy the success of something like Star Wars. Now we have lots of legacies, spinoffs of something like Star Wars. But within the animation world, I'm always pushing for new types of stories that can be brought to the screen.
We talk all the time, my colleagues within the voice world, about getting behind original content. But, you know,  I can't hold it against somebody if they just want to goof off on their Sea-Doo or whatever all weekend long. They can do that. I'm always saying, "Let's get behind this idea, or let's get behind this idea and produce our own original content and see where it goes.”
 
Brian Talbot:
Well, you know, I think there's more and more people who are in voice acting that are interested in doing that. I'm starting to see radio plays or radio theater popping up as episodic or a serial podcast.
 
Randall Ryan:
Apparently the radio drama thing is a huge thing in the UK.
 
Mark Oliver:
I think it's particularly understandable in view of the fact that I think people just have overall screen fatigue. I mean I know I do. I'd like the idea that one could have the luxury of walking around and just listening to a drama. Interesting, you had touched on the career of my silent film producer grandfather. He was constantly approached by inventors to get behind this, that, or the other. My father was present one afternoon when some technicians in white lab coats wheeled a huge apparatus under white sheets into the office of my grandfather in Berlin. They pulled off the cover and plugged in cables and turned knobs. So my father got to see a very early demonstration of Fernsehen or television.
 
Brian Talbot:
Oh my gosh.
 
Mark Oliver:
They were trying to solicit my grandfather for investment funds. He watched this demonstration. At the end of it, he said, "Gentlemen, you have a most fascinating device. But I'm afraid, I don't know whether I can be of any help, because you see, I don't think people will have the attention span for something like this. People like…
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
MarkOliver:
…people like the escapism of going to the cinema. When they're at home, they have the radio, and they can perform any amount of household chores. But to ask somebody to be held captive by this thing for more than five minutes, I think it's too much to ask of the average man or woman. So I'm going to have to pass I'm afraid.”
 
Brian Talbot:
Oh my gosh.
 
Randall Ryan:
He turned the Beatles down too didn't he?
 
Mark Oliver:
He turned the Beatles down. He turned the Beatles down.
 
Brian Talbot:
Another show that did come to mind when we were talking about, can you just create an episodic that works with animation? The TV show Archer, I think, is brilliant. It's some of the best written stuff, and the characters on Archer are all just regular people.
 
Mark Oliver:
Yeah, it's true. I love Archer.
 
Brian Talbot:
They do have a lot of resemblance in the characters, and so they really do capture different aspects of the voice actors and put them into the characters. Then they have the scope to be able to make those characters broader and wider and much different than what a live action or in-person filming of that show would end up looking like. So I think there's room for it.
 
Mark Oliver:
You know I've tried to float any amount of projects, well, three, within the last year which were all going to be period dramas. You have to go like, "Oh, but there's another damn period project." So you think, "What are the logistics of that? Where we have to go? We'd have to go to Budapest to do that." But I would love to be able to take any one of those stories and just go, fine, this is going be rendered within the world of animation, and none of that is going to be a concern. We'll be able to take all kinds of liberties, etc., etc. I wonder whether people would accept dramatic stories that didn't depend on any kind of sort of slapstick or comedy from beneath the guise of animation. You can hide so many different types of stories that perhaps people might have been somewhat reluctant to hear if they were rendered on camera and so on. So I look to the future and would love to get behind the development of this, that, or the other thing.
I'd like to think that the entire industry was going to start embracing a whole slate of projects that were daring.  It’s disappointing to see the same kind of story constantly reiterated. I mean I know that this is a business, and there's a bottom line that one has to pay attention to.  But…
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure
 
Mark Oliver:
…appetites are constantly evolving. One only has to look at what happens within the world of episodic drama, and you realize, my God, those stories could never have been brought to the screen 15 years ago.
 
Brian Talbot:
I think there's room for evolution on it. One of the things that's really neat is that, because of technology, we're starting to see some convergence, right, across mediums. I saw a documentary, it was about the University of Texas mass murder that took place back in 1960... what was it, '66, something like that.
 
Randall Ryan:
You're not talking about the tower shooting.
 
Mark Oliver:
[inaudible 00:29:58].
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, the tower shooting. The way they did the documentary was amazing because they actually had police radio audio. Then they took all the characters... The whole thing was animated.
 
Mark Oliver:
What?
 
Brian Talbot:
It was a documentary-
 
Randall Ryan:
Wow.
 
Brian Talbot:
... that was animated. They took the characters and they cast them. So they had the different people talking about the experience in hindsight, and then actually being able to add voice to some of the cutaway live action scenes of what was going on at the moment. Then they were able to incorporate some of the original news broadcasts and police radio calls and stuff like that. What a fascinating way to tell a story through a documentary.
 
Mark Oliver:
Another shooter in the high tower in the University of Texas.
 
Brian Talbot:
There you go. So I think there is room for that kind of stuff. We'll see. So Mark, how much influence did your grandfather have on you growing up? Did you get a chance to spend a lot of time with him?
 
Mark Oliver:
Oh, no. Well, he passed away in 1947. But I know him from a fragment of silent film from 1916 where he makes an on-camera appearance. That's the only evidence of him moving through this bit of footage. I know him through…
 
Brian Talbot:
Wow.
 
Mark Oliver:
... letters and business correspondence…
 
Randall Ryan:
Sure.
 
Mark Oliver:
… and many, many photographs and through the recollections of people who knew him and worked with him. So his presence sort of loomed large over the house. I'm turning my head now, and I'm surrounded by all of the material possessions that my grandparents had in Berlin, huge pieces of furniture and drawings and paintings. It's as if this place here on the west coast of Canada had just been a room picked up and moved across the continents to somehow come to rest here, so…
 
Randall Ryan:
How cool.
 
Mark Oliver:
...surrounded by all of this. Of course, because I didn't know him personally, I'm always sort of going to try and imagine what he was like as an individual. It's sort of like Citizen Kane where the cub reporters are sent out with the stipulation, "Rosebud. Give me something about this Rosebud, Kane's last words.”
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing) That’s the quest.
 
Mark Oliver:
Yeah. I mean people go like, "Well, what a nerdy thing to do." The whole point of it is is that you and I and everybody who's been listening to this podcast have only ever known a world where there was cinema, where there were films. But people like my grandfather, there was a very small group of individuals who were going to prove the commercial viability of film. Because you have to remember that the biggest competition for movies when they first arrived on the scene, and by this, I mean,  we're going back to the years 1903, 1905, your biggest competition would've been traveling stage troops where they would mount like a live X-ray demonstration in the theater. They'd set up an X-ray device and call this, that, or the other member of the audience onto the stage, and people would clap and shout and scream when they saw that person from behind this big pain of glass and you would be seeing an X-ray image of them. God knows how many [inaudible 00:33:27] rays those poor people were exposed to.
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Randall Ryan:
That's the first thing I think of, "And we create cancer.”
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
That is it. But that was the biggest competition for, that was the biggest competition for film. There was no precedent for it. I mean how could you make money from this endeavor? There was no film language. What kind of stories were you supposed to use this medium to tell? So for me, what's interesting is that these people, these pioneers are really rather like, serve in the same position that people who are at the cutting front of VR technology are at now because we're kind of at a tipping point and will be, I guess, over the next few years when everything will change. I suppose we've all been waiting for the advent of VR in homes across the world, and people will look at the two dimensional screen as this fossil.
 
Brian Talbot:
A relic of the past. Yeah.
 
Mark Oliver:
Really when I try to bring my imagination to bear and think of the very, very early days of cinema and the role that people like my grandfather would've played in its development, I find that fascinating. It's kind of like alchemy. The people that saw it in their mind's eye, they could go home and grind a lens at nighttime and show up to the studio and see what that did.  You know all these kind of strange experiments with lighting and different film stocks and the kind of performances that you could bring to the screen. People suddenly realized, "Oh my God, it's not like the theater. We can really dial back all this physical language, and it just can become very small and intimate." So these are many factors that have led me to pursue this as research and also as a kind of story of one man's rise and fall and how that person's life could actually be a mirror of cinema history itself.
 
Randall Ryan:
I'm still waiting for my thousand shares of Sankyo Quadraphonic to pay off.
 
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Randall Ryan:
Do you think that's going to [inaudible 00:35:32] anytime soon? Hey, Mark, I got a question for you.
 
Mark Oliver:
Certainly.
 
Randall Ryan:
You've lived in three of the biggest actor cities. You've lived in London. You've lived in New York. You've lived in Vancouver. What made you come back to and settle in Vancouver?
 
Mark Oliver:
At a certain point I thought, "I suppose I really have to spend more time with my mother and father. They're getting older." And it was traumatic to be in New York City for reasons yet to be discovered.
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
There was no way you could live in the Manhattan of that period without maintaining a big brass front. I mean you just had to have a lot of nerve and be totally fearless.
 
Brian Talbot:
Boy, do I understand. I lived there in the late '80s and left in '90 for exactly the same reason.
 
Mark Oliver:
So I just realized, like, if I continue to be in this city, I am not going to be doing myself any favors because I just don't have the will to be as adept or a bullshitter as I once did.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah I didn't like who I was becoming, because of the city, right. It was changing me as a person and not necessarily in a good way.
 
Mark Oliver:
It's hard. You might have to make the occasional Faustian bargain with yourself, and I…
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
…didn't want to do, I didn’t want to do that particularly. And the city was changing. It wasn't the New York that I'd arrived to. So having said all that, it came as a great kind of moral defeat to have to leave Manhattan because you hear the kind of inverse of Frank Sinatra in your mind: If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere. So all I could hear was, "You didn't make it here so that you'll never make it anywhere.”(laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Mark Oliver:
That’s all, that kept playing out in my mind again and again…
 
Randall Ryan:
Sure. Ouch.
 
Mark Oliver:
…It was hard to come to terms with that. But, you know, now I look back and I can laugh about it all because it really... you know what did I expect of myself? I don't know. I was a different person then, and I have different needs now.
 
Randall Ryan:
Yep. Well, there's also that fame thing that we're all subject to. People think you've made it when you've worked on the big game.  Right?  Yet, the big game doesn't necessarily pay you more than that indie project, and it certainly doesn't pay you necessarily more than a long-term animation thing that maybe it's got an niche audience, but you keep coming back and you keep doing episodes, but somebody who's making a career doing the episodic stuff. So I think the New York thing also, like the LA thing, can have an element of that.
 
Brian Talbot:
Well, take your choice. Do you want to be a famous person, or do you want to be a long-time working actor?
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Brian Talbot:
Right.
There’s lots of things you can do to get famous,(laughing) and a lot of them aren't really good. Do you want that fame where, "Oh man, I was soldier
 
Mark Oliver:
No!
 
Brian Talbot:
…number 17 in this game?”
 
Mark Oliver:
Can I tell you can I say this? I got to get this off my chest right now. I wanted I moved to New York City because I wanted to be cool, and I stayed in New York because I wanted to be cool. I only want do cool things. If I did one thing that was not so groovy, then I would feel ashamed. It's easy for me to say, I suppose. I feel bad for some actor friends of mine who just go, "But I got to work, man. I'm working." You go, "But this thing that you're doing is, it’s heinous." If we had a really operational union, like a real actor's union, then the heads of those unions would be able to call producers onto the carpet and say, "Gentlemen, we've studied the script for the project you have in mind and frankly, we feel it is beneath the dignity of our membership.”(laughing) That would be a real-
 
Brian Talbot:
There goes most of the projects. There you go.
 
Randall Ryan:
Yeah, that's it. There go most of the projects.
 
Mark Oliver:
That's sort of what I feel. I mean, I guess I've had to cut corners here and there to somehow survive, but I really feel like those things can come back and haunt you. I look up to my heroes for setting an example to follow. There was going to be a future full of compromise in New York City, and that was a heartbreaker….
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah.
 
Mark Oliver:
…Of course, now I laugh because I must have been a very, very naïve and extremely idealistic young man, too.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah you know there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing…
 
Mark Oliver
(Sigh)
 
Brian Talbot:
…wrong with being idealistic and naïve and you know trying to get what you want.
 
Mark Oliver:
Yeah.
 
Brian Talbot:
There’s nothing wrong with turning down the bargain.
 
Mark Oliver:
Oh, but it's so scary because like all the famous people I knew or the people who became really big stars were really just prepared to like completely sell out at the first…
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, do anything.
 
Mark Oliver:
... opportunity. Now some of them are still around, and they're sort of accorded this legendary status now. I thought, "Oh, no. That person's heart wasn't in the right place back then, and it's not in the right place now. It's galling. It is galling.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah.
 
MarkOliver:
If any of you belong to MUBI, the European streaming platform, you can watch this little film that I directed which talks about all of these things, or I'd like to think that it covers a few of them. It is Elvis: Strung Out. That's kind of an examination of celebrity culture.
But that was kind of a voiceover endeavor or wouldn't have come together had it not been from my experience doing ADR. Because I'd had this big file of Elvis dialogue talking about particular things, and I edited it down until I felt I kind of created a Haiku. Then I thought, "Well, this is deserving of its own video now." So I had to go out and try and find as much archival footage of Elvis in the same outfit…
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
 
Mark Oliver:
… for continuity's sake, and then keyed it in over the audio so it was like lip sync in reverse. But, I realized while I was doing this with my editor, he was saying, "But that doesn't really work, does it?" I go, "No, it does." Because I'd spent so much time trying to fit dialogue into an image on the screen, I thought, "Oh, actually, yeah. I guess I've been kind of training to do precisely this type of project for a very, very long time.”
 
Brian Talbot:
Fabulous.
 
Mark Oliver:
It's funny how even something like that came as a consequence of being a voice person. Who would've thunk it?  Just an aside, an aside.
 
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
I think it's all about putting yourself in the right position and then just being open for the opportunity. What's the best piece of advice you can offer?
 
Mark Oliver:
I think you gave an extremely good one, and we'll circle back to that because it stayed in my mind. That is, if you wish to become part of this community of voice people, the first thing that you must do is to become a student of voices, full stop. You just have to be fascinated by that. People have stopped me and said, "Yeah, it's all right for you to say," or whatever, because they feel like I'd found a loophole.
 
 
Brian Talbot:
Like you didn't have to go through it…
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
…You didn't have to put in the hard work. Right yeah.
 
Mark Oliver:
It's like, well, you can make so much money, those union jobs down at the liquor store, you just got to know somebody or something like that.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, yeah.
 
Mark Oliver:
I would have to say, I consider the community of voice acting, to be, it's a very, very pure pursuit. Everybody is very warm and welcoming to anybody else who enters that world. I think that people are so gifted. I'll go out on a limb and say I think it could, in many ways, be the purest form of acting there is in terms of being able to lift something off of a page and make it come alive, or at least that's what I will always try and do.
 
Randall Ryan:
Well, I will say that I completely agree with you that, at least in my experience, the difference between the voice acting community and any other discipline of acting, is just exactly what you said, warm, friendly, inviting, helpful, let's all work on this together, let me help you if I can, which is completely different than, I would even say, not just other forms of acting, but most other creative disciplines. There's always this sense of competition that pervades. My first tribe are musicians, and I love my musician tribe. It's still what I self-identify as and yet, the level of competition and backstabbing, and "I'm better" and nitpicking. That’s what the voice acting community seems, for whatever reason, kind of lack that, and that's a very positive thing.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, it kind of transcends that. I'm going to go ahead and agree with you because, well, you said that my advice was some of the best advice you could give, so there we go.
 
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
 
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
 
Brian Talbot:
Hey, it's been great to share this time with you and Randall.
 
Randall Ryan:
BT.
 
Brian Talbot:
Mark Oliver.
 
Mark Oliver:
Hey, BT, it's been a pleasure.
 
Brian Talbot:
Thank you so much for spending time with us.
 
Mark Oliver:
Anytime.
 
Brian Talbot:
Until next time.
 
Mark Oliver:
Later.
 
Brian Talbot:
Good times with Mark Oliver. What an interesting and talented guy. We could have talked all night. But, hey, who's got that kind of time? (Laughing) Let’s Talk Voiceover is hosted by Randy Ryan, owner of HamsterBall Studios, delivering the world's best talent virtually anywhere, and me, Brian Talbot, actor and all around creative dude. Reach out to us anytime by sending an email to bt@letstalkvoiceover.com or go to our website at www.letstalkvoiceover.com. That's www.letstalkvoiceover.com. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, and, yeah, check us out on Facebook and Twitter, too. We might take a look. It'll be fun. It'll be a good time. Good times had by all. Thanks for listening to Let's Talk Voiceover. We'll talk again real soon.

Heather Dame is currently the VP of Atlas LA and heads up Atlas' west coast branch. Heather built Atlas' Animation department from the ground up, as well as had a close hand and partnership with other agents in developing the Los Angeles commercial, video game and promo/narration/trailer departments. She is passionate about developing talent and creating new business equally and enjoys the creative parts of "agent-ing" just as much as the problem solving and negotiating side. She believes in conducting business openly and honestly, and is one of the best in the business. Want to know what a top agent thinks? It's all here in Episode 30 of Let's Talk, with Heather Dame. 
Brian Talbot:
... We've always been different.
Randall Ryan:
I find that's a good thing as a general rule.
Brian Talbot:
I don't know. I mean, who wouldn't want to be you?
Randall Ryan:
There are issues with being...
Brian Talbot:
Wow.
Randall Ryan:
I'm not even going to try to answer that.
Brian Talbot:
Talk about testing the friendship. Ouch. Oh, wow.
 
THEME MUSIC
Brian Talbot:
Heather Dame knows a good voice when she hears one, Heather heads up Atlas Talent’s west coast branch. Moving from New York to Los Angeles over a decade ago, she built the western empire full of some of the best voice actors anywhere. Heather built Atlas's animation department from the ground up, as well as having a close hand and partnership with other agents in developing the Los Angeles commercial video game, promo, narration, and trailer departments. She is as passionate about developing talent as she is about creating new business, from agenting to problem-solving to negotiating, Heather is open and honest, and she brings that approach to her business, that makes her the person every voice actor would love to have on their side. With so much to say and so little time to say it, Let's Talk Voiceover Heather Dame.
Heather Dame:
Hi guys. I don't think that I have ever had my bio narrated before. It's a very weird experience. Happy to be here.
Brian Talbot:
You're not the first. In fact, I've got a new side niche and it's called Bio Narration, and I'm trying to get represented for it.  So, uh…yeah.
Heather Dame:
Well, I would be better if you just gave me a pep talk every morning, I think.
Brian Talbot:
I can do that too. I can do that. I've been known to wash someone's dog for 20 bucks. It's a dog eat dog world.
Heather Dame:
Anyways, hi.
Randall Ryan:
So you've been in LA long enough now, because I still consider you a northeasterner.
Heather Dame:
Okay.
Randall Ryan:
‘Cause, you and I met, if I would say to use the word met, literally like maybe a year after you came out to LA, and you were still going back to the Northeast to go camping and hiking and maybe you're still doing that.
Heather Dame:
I am.
Randall Ryan:
How do you consider yourself at this point?
Heather Dame:
I'm a west coast person now. I mean, I go back and forth still, but I've been living out here for 10 years now. It's kind of crazy. I've had to actually shift my language more recently, because I'm like, "You know, we're new out here." And people look at me like they don't even know we were never in Los Angeles. That we only had started this agency out here 10 years ago. They think we've always been here. So to me, it's interesting. I am now fully west coast. I'm married. I have four step kids. My life is very full and it is absolutely west coast, but I go back to visit my family in New Hampshire and Boston all the time. And I go back at least once a year to go visit all my people in New York, since I agented there first and I lived there for seven years before I came out here. But I am firmly planted out here. They like it when I'm out here and helping the office operate. So yeah, I'd say I've fully acclimated to the west coast state of mind.
Randall Ryan:
No, I was just going to say, did you actually open the LA office? Because, I thought that there was like a small presence here and you kind of came out to really not only build it up, but do the VO aspect of it.
Heather Dame:
No. So Atlas has been open since 2000 in New York.  The owners of the company, John and Lisa, when they opened Atlas, they did a lot of promos and commercials and radio imaging and all of that jazz out of New York and across the country. And actually one of the owners of the company, John Wasser, had been going back and forth for years before they moved me out here, just coming and staying in hotels, just like a Willy Loman of voiceover if you will, pitching a lot of trailer talent. So he really developed a lot of our trailer talent from the ground up, but we never had an actual presence out here in the other areas of voiceover or an office. And so, I was the first man on the ground out here in a Los Angeles office. John came back and forth and still does to this day, actually.
But they asked me to basically build up the animation game, as well as help develop the commercial department in Los Angeles and help build the whole office from the ground up. It was just me and a part-time assistant in a small office space when we started and we've had four office expansions since, and now we have seven full-time employees out here and most of our company’s bicoastal. So it's grown over the course of time, but we did have that presence in promos and trailers in that world, but we did not have that presence yet in animation and games and commercials in Los Angeles.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Brian Talbot:
So how did you break the doors down to get into animation and games? I mean, those are some pretty sturdy doors.
Heather Dame:
It was a lot and we took it one day at a time. So I don't know if you guys are aware of Michael Leon Wooley, I like to call him like LA animation Talent Zero, for us. When I was still in New York, he really wanted to get into animation. He booked the Princess And The Frog and he asked me to set him up with meetings. And so, John and I just started cold-calling people asking them to take meetings with him, and that's kind of how it started. And people met him and they loved him and they started hiring him. And so, he was actually on the west coast before we were, interestingly enough.
Heather Dame:
And so, we just started calling people. John really helped me. I was a brand new agent. I had been doing promos in New York and I’ve been doing it for, you know, maybe eight months to a year, and I'd started succeeding and he turned around and he was like, "Build animation." I was like, "Wha…what?  You want me to do what?" Like, "Yeah, you should build an animation department." And so, he helped me and Lisa helped me and we just started calling people and setting up meetings and we introduced ourselves one person at a time.  And there was a lot of talent who came with us from the beginning. Hynden Walch came with us right away as well. Jim Cummings, Roger Rose…you know, there's a lot of people who started the agency with us in Los Angeles and really helped us build it brick by brick. That's why I think it's funny, I can't help but call us like the little engine that could, even though I get that's no longer how people view us.
 
Randall Ryan:Right.
 
Heather Dame:
But I think that perspective helps on a daily basis, to keep doing your job and view it with fresh eyes and feel positive and continue to always be looking for “how do I continue to build” and not be jaded, which I think a lot of agents are. You know, it's a tough job.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah. It is.
Heather Dame:
It truly is like, it truly is. And I think a lot of people, until you walk in those shoes, you don't really understand how difficult of a job it is. You wear a lot of hats and a lot is expected of you, more than you could ever imagine is expected of you. I mean, honestly we just called people one at a time. Andrea Romano was one of the first meetings that I took, and very funnily she said to me something that shaped the way that I helped build Atlas and our roster out here was, she said to me, "I don't need you to have a hundred people on your roster. I need you to have one great person and they can book the job. I'd rather you send me one great person than 20 mediocre people who aren't ready and aren't right for the job."
Randall Ryan:
Oh my God, no kidding.
Heather Dame:
And it really…because, I was like, “I don't have people yet.” She said, "Who else do you represent?" She had met Michael Leon Wooley, was hiring him on Batman: The Brave And The Bold, loved him, and that was the moment she said, "Who else do you have?" And I sat in that meeting, and I wasn't sure what to say and I said, "No one yet."
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And that was her response to me. And it changed the way that I viewed how we were going to operate and what worked and what didn't. And so I no longer felt like…I felt like it was okay, I'm going to sell the people that we have and develop the people that I find. And we're going to do it slowly and surely, and not too quickly, and make sure that we're doing it in a curated, thoughtful, organic way that it's not just about signing on everyone you can and throwing spaghetti against the wall.  It's going to be more methodical and slow and building. And so, I think that is why we've sustained and built the way we have over the course of time. Because, a lot of people, I think they think, just get as many clients as possible and throw spaghetti against the wall and see what happens.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
And then that creates a very different way of operating that I don’t think helps everybody succeed in the long term.
Randall Ryan:
No.
 
Heather Dame: We have the philosophy at Atlas, we have the reputation that it's hard to get signed with us.  And I think the reason for that is that when we bring someone on, everybody agrees.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
Both offices, New York and LA, all the agents, even if that agent isn't going to service that talent, that you still want to make sure that, when the right project comes up for them and for that talent, that they're on board, that they want to service and support that talent and be on board with booking them. And so, it makes it more difficult to get signed with us, but it also means we have a very curated list that is very well supported by multiple agents. And that's never really just one agent that the talent can rely on for their business. So they're more diversified across both coasts and across the full agency, if that makes sense.
Randall Ryan:
That makes a lot of sense. And the one thing that I've always really admired about you, and this is coming from a director's point of view: one of the things that has driven me nuts about a lot of agents and a lot of agencies, is you go to them and you say, and you have a very specific character description, "I need this." And the tendency of a lot of agencies is to say, "Oh, well, I need to send you.." I'm going to pick a number out of a hat.. "12 people, because you need to know that I have these people here."
Brian Talbot:
12? You're being really generous for most agents. I got to tell you.
Randall Ryan:
Well, my point being that they may have three or four people that legitimately fit that character description, and yet they'll send a larger number. I don't know whether it's to show the talent that they're working for them, but it's almost like, did you read the character description? And that is the one thing that I've always really admired about you, two things: one, that I can come to you and say, "Heather, this is what I'm looking for." And that's what you send me. You don't send me like, “ehhh, here's someone maybe you should know about.”  And that you also have always been very generous with saying, "Keep me in the loop. But if you need to contact somebody to talk about a project or whatever, that's fine. Just keep me in the loop." Which I respect and do. Is that something that is more…is that your philosophy, is that an agency philosophy?  Who drove that?
Heather Dame:
Well, I think how you lead is how people gives them the chance to be more creative and find their own way with things, and have the room to grow and find their own talents, if you will. So I think that is specifically a style I have. However, I have to give credit to the owners of the company for giving me such autonomy and space to really grow as an agent and play to my strengths, that they gave me the opportunity to develop that way of operating, if that makes sense, because no one had done animation before at our agency, or games. And so, it is such a different skillset that I had to learn that market and had to learn the talent and learn the skillsets behind it.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And that was something; I would go to classes, I would go to sessions. I did all sorts of things to figure it out, because I had learned the trade of promos when I first started and that was their trade. So they could teach me how to do that in promos and how to look at that from that perspective. But the piece that is from the agency is that, because the agency started out with such a heavy promotional department and that world, something that most people I don't think recognize about that area of the world, unless you work in it, is that is a highly pitched business. It's all relationship based. And those aren't opportunities that just... It's not like a promo producer has a spot that they're working on for one of their shows. And just the way an animation casting director or video game cast director will reach out to lots of people, because they need lots of good options from around town, from multiple agencies.  Promo producers tend to actually just want to reach out to one agent as long as they can fulfill their needs.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hm.
 
Heather Dame:
And so that, business is very much solely based on relationships and the ability to book those jobs. So it is fully pitched. So you can't expect, you can't become an agent in promos and expect your phone to ring, it won't and the money certainly won't come in either, you have to go get those relationships, you have to go build them. And then when the projects come in, you have to book them and you have to continuously do a great job for that person, so that over the course of time, your hope is that 20 years in you have an exclusive relationship. And there's quite a few exclusive relationships in that world. So that's, a bit of, if you're talking about what comes from the company or that's a bit of what I think you're talking about where that stems from for me, is that viewpoint on agenting.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
I don't view it as I've got a roster, you should call me.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
I view it as a very curated experience, that experience I bring to each buyer and each client over the course of time and the job I do for them.  Not only do I have to call them first and build that relationship, that's on me, not on them, but once I do that as well, then I also have to do a great job and curate lists and curate. Because, in the long term, the way I'm going to be able to...When we started out, we had a couple big name people, but for the most part, we developed a lot of our roster from the ground up…
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
…and to where they are today. And we have some really successful people we built from the ground up, in partnership with them. And how you do that, like how do I send you someone completely unknown, and you trust me that they're going to be able to hold their own in a session. Well, I show you that I can be trusted
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
And that I have that ear. And so that's, a bit of my strategy, if you will, as an agent, now I'm giving you my agent secrets.
Randall Ryan:
Again, from my perspective, I massively appreciate that, because you're right. If I send you something and you send me somebody in there like, "Hey, this is somebody I think you should listen to." I know you're not blowing smoke up my skirt. Like, "No, actually I've looked at what you're looking for, I know something about this person, or I maybe know a lot about this person. I think they could do this." And whether they get booked or not, I can't even think of any time that you've sent me something like that and it's like, "Yeah, no, not that person." They've always been in that wheelhouse. And that's kind of the point, isn't it?
Heather Dame:
Yeah. I mean, it is the point. It should be the point.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah. It should be the point.
Heather Dame:
It should be the point. I think that's also where I have fun. I enjoy that process of it. The casting and the developing and learning the nuances and building those relationships with people and that's the part that I really love. Do I have to also be good at the negotiating part and the navigating part and all of that?  I know how to spin with the best of them, because I'm an agent, it's part of my job. I know how to do all of those sort of things, but I really like live in the casting space. That space of it is what makes this job come to life for me.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And so, I enjoy it as well, so that's a piece of it that I feel like is something I can uniquely bring.  And a lot of times when I'm selling the agency I'm also selling my ear and my development style, and not just "Here's some people pick one." And I think that is a distinction that some people are really great at, and some people are not. And it is a distinction between different types of agenting, as well. Like I think it's more important in the game and animation world than it is in the commercial world, for instance, where it's a little bit more like a roulette game trying to win one of those jobs. And it’s not always the way that they audition, is it's not always something they... Like what you read on your commercial audition, is essentially usually what they're going to expect in the booth. And when you read for an animation or game audition, they're going to expect five other things from you in the booth when you get there.
And so that's, the complicated way in which animation and games, since it casts remotely now, that's the difference it makes, is that the casting director has to figure out either they know you and they've worked with you in the booth before and that's what makes it easier to pass you forward, right?
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
I mean, in some senses, you get a new person, you listen to their demo or listen to their audition rather and you love it, but you don't know their name. My guess, is the first thing you do is ask, "Oh, which agency is that person with? Have they done anything? Who are they? Can I trust them in the booth?" Because, what you don't want to do as a casting director is put them through, have them hired and then have them walk in the door and not be able to perform what's expected of them, because what's on the MP3 is only the beginning of what's expected of them in the booth.
Randall Ryan:
Again, I can only speak from my own perspective. If somebody nails an audition, you can kind of tell when somebody's cobbled something together most of the time, at least with auditions that I send out, and there's that fine line that you have to do of, you want to give enough copy to be able to let the person stretch and do what it is that they do without being “you're going to be in the booth for an hour just doing an audition,” which I think is unconscionable from my perspective. But I almost always try to give enough copy or enough leeway or, "Please do this two or three different ways, if you think you can bring two or three different things to the table."  If somebody can do that, they're probably going to be just fine. The people who really are too green to be able to walk into a booth and do it, somewhere in that audition, I'm not going to say a hundred percent, because I've had those things happen, but high nineties, if you do the audition well, and if they turn something around, you can kind of tell, no, this person knows what they're doing.  Whether they’ve got 50 credits under their belt or zero kind of doesn't matter at that point.  They can do the gig.
Heather Dame:
Yes. If you're expecting them to only do that one voice and that one character.
 
Randall Ryan:
Fair point.
 
Heather Dame:
And for me at least, in animation I think it's probably a bigger deal than it is in games. And it comes up more in animation than it does in games, but in animation, they usually want you to cover three characters, at least two. And there's so much more nuance I think in long term, if you're playing a character over a full series and they're hiring you for five seasons of a character and you're meant to breathe life into it. So maybe the context difference is animation versus games, because I've definitely had people who audition really well who are not as good in the moment in the booth, and I've had people who don't audition as well who are amazing when they get in the room.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
Heather Dame:
So it's interesting, because from my perspective I see both of it. I think you kind of get the best of everybody, you know?  Like you're not being sent the people who aren't ready for you yet…
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
… I think in a lot of circumstances.  But I have people that I have to work with that I really, like they have to. I would rather them audition less but come into our booth every week, because from home they're just not able to create what they can when they're in person with people. And it's interesting, so I know that they're more talented than their auditions. So that happens too on my end, is that there are people who are more talented than their auditions. And I have to try to eke that out of them, teach them the skill of auditioning and specifically from home, so that they can actually put forth what they can do on those MP3 files.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
Heather Dame:
It's an interesting world, because, I mean I'm glad that it's opened up, because that opened up an opportunity for us to develop people. And I don't think we would've been able to, if it were a closed group of people working in animation and games.  But it is an interesting shift in the industry in general of how it has really turned to be more from home in general, and how much of the audition process and booking process happens all remotely without anyone meeting each other.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
Brian Talbot:
So that's, a really interesting part of what we all go through, especially as an actor, not only is it the self-direction and figuring out how to self-direct from a home audition, but then most of the work, I mean, the story is always that all the animation and game work has to be done in LA.  How accurate, how inaccurate, what kind of recommendations do you have for voice actors on that?
Heather Dame:
So, Randy actually does a lot of his stuff from home studios. He's fine with that. And there are a couple people who do do that. And so, there's no hard and fast rule. Which is why I'll never say never, but from my experience, talking to many casting directors, as well as bookings and submitting people from out of town and I mean, we represent people across the entire country, as well as we have a full department in New York that are local New York people, as well as our local LA; it's kind of like a Venn diagram of people that do different things. The thing that I tend to tell people as the reality, is that you can book a couple of jobs in animation and games not living in Los Angeles, but if you want to build a full long-sustaining career, you have to be there. It's where the opportunities are. It's where the relationships are. Those moments are built in the booth with people.
 
Brian Talbot:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
The relationships and the connections happen in person. And the majority of the jobs prefer people to be in person. And even in the context where someone's auditioning from out of town but would fly in, where they would fly in for the booking, that I've even seen over the course of time. Because, you have to remember, we started with no one in Los Angeles. We started with the New York office, and I had a bunch of Broadway people there. So what do you think I did? I used them.
 
Brian Talbot:
Of course!
 
Heather Dame:
That's the first thing I'm going to do is like, I'm going to make animation people out of these Broadway people. That's where Michael-Leon Wooley started.  They're amazing actors. We can teach them the skill set. Andrea Romano even came and taught a class for me in New York, which she hadn't done in years, when she heard I was looking to train them up. She's like, "I'll come, if you set it up and meet those people and help them." So that's how I started off doing it. So I've done that for many year.s and I've done it with some limited success here and there. But what I've discovered is that most jobs in animation, they're just unpredictable. It's very organic how things happen.  It may be that at four o'clock Nickelodeon is writing to me saying, "We have this audition for tomorrow. What are your ideas?” Or “We want to see this person, anyone else?"  And I just name the other person, and they get a time tomorrow and they gave us two times.  And so now, if you're in New York, what if you were the perfect person for that? They're not going to see you, and you dismiss that opportunity. Ultimately, people also like you would basically have to fly blindly no matter what. Meaning like, they may say on Monday “we need them on Wednesday,” and now you're booking a thousand-dollar plane ticket. Your cost of your travel is more than the session itself. And there are just a lot of jobs that look that way. And so, the reality is that if you really want to be in it, if you really want to build a career in it, you have to be where it is, and it's here. If, you want to book some jobs…
 
Brian Talbot:
Yep.
 
Heather Dame:
 …absolutely you can do that from afar. You have to find an agent who's willing to do that with you and willing to put you out in the places that it will work, but I haven't seen, and I've seen a lot of this.  Like I have to say, I have so much context for this conversation and I'm not going to talk about details of different talent, but I have so much context for this conversation. I've tried it every which way. And at the end of the day, I have just not seen someone build as full of a career as they could. I even have people who work quite a bit in animation out of Nickelodeon in New York, and still can't succeed. And there's a girl I know that if she came out to LA would be all over the place, everybody would be using her in town. She's so amazing.  
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And remotely, she just doesn't build that career.  But she has other careers, and so she's living her best life. She's perfectly happy.
 
Randall Ryan: Right, right.
 
Brian Talbot:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
We've had this discussion and I'm not disappointed either. She's living the life that she wants to live and doing the work that she wants to do, and I'm able to help her get animation while living in New York as well. And that's awesome. And we love her, and she's one of my favorite talents, and she's just such a kind, awesome human being. And she's working a ton as well in New York, but it's still not the same as it would be if she lived in LA.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
And that's just a reality. And I don't think that's going to change, because animation, the magic happens in the room a lot. It's a lot of improvisation and chemistry and moments that people are creating together.  I think, games often are a little bit more isolated in how they cast and how they book. I think that's the reason a lot of those have been more willing to do remote sessions and do things from New York or LA or book a studio or the like, but for animation, I don't think that's going to die anytime soon. I think that there's something that makes animation just shine when it's done that way.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And there's a je ne sais quoi about breathing life into it, in person. The places where they're actually, interestingly enough, splitting people up is where they have a celebrity on the show and they're shooting something in…Toronto.
 
Brian Talbot:
Got it.  Yep.
 
Heather Dame:
And so, when you're working with that kind of context, sometimes they still will bring in the rest of the cast and have someone come in and just read those lines or have people scratch, people who are other members of the cast scratch that person's lines.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
Because they still want the magic of that. But they're not going to replace their lead role because they booked a series regular, and now they're shooting in Toronto. And so they have to pick that person up later in the ADR phase.  But there are some animated series that will do it, one person at a time. And usually it's for those sort of reasons.  But I'd say a lot of animated series, they have a regular day and tim, they record with their cast, and they try to stick to that as much as they can. There's obviously lots of circumstances around which they will change that around. But typically, let's say you book a lead role in an animated series, typically you know that you're recording every Tuesday from two to six, you're on hold for it indefinitely.
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
Heather Dame:
And then they, depending on how prominent your character is, they book or release you for that hold. So that's generally how they operate, though they break that rule a lot, because of the amount of celebrities and name talent.  And technology is such now that where they feel more comfortable with the sound quality of studios that aren't in Los Angeles, and they can control that better. They are more willing to do it, but it tends to be the exception to the rule, not the rule itself.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And in games, it depends on the game, but games that are really looking for more interaction and acting and are a little bit more cinematic are starting to do the same thing.  Like Blizzard will do that. Andrea likes to bring people in together…
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
…and have them interact, and have their characters interact. And I saw you guys interviewed her. So that's, probably where this came up in your podcast, was with her. She does that quite a bit. And right when she thinks it's really going to make a difference to the product. And I think it's really smart, and I've heard my actress say, it's amazing, they love it. Like it is some of the best work they feel like they've done.
Brian Talbot:
It's so much more helpful as an actor to be able to interact, as opposed to just trying to create it all in your head and hope that you're getting to where you need to be. Absolutely.
Heather Dame:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
And they also do things like table reads ahead of time, which, that's one of the lovely things about working for a company of that size with those kind of pockets, is that they have the opportunity to do that. And I think that kind of bespeaks a little bit to some of the other things you're saying about how and why people outside of LA sometimes get the work is when budgets are not where you can actually say, "Hey, let's go to a studio for four hours and everybody's going to show up and let's do this, and we're going to do this every Tuesday." As you said. That's the other side of things, but gaming budgets are continuing to come up.  I know that for the stuff that I do, and some of this is because I've pushed for it for a long period of time, but I'm now seeing a lot of budgets that are coming up above scale. And even non-union things that are coming up above scale. And so, when you start getting things to that point, now you start to have that ability to do more ensemble stuff or to take that kind of time. And I wonder if that's kind of part of it, is that it is just that animation, this has just been the world that they've lived in, and games started from literally people in cubicles saying, "Can you do a voiceover?" And…I mean they started from a very different place.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah.
 
Heather Dame:
Yeah. So they're valuing what the actors bring to the table and to their scripts more than ever, I would say.
Randall Ryan:
Yes.
Heather Dame:
In gaming as well, because of the storylines they're creating.  But at the same time, what they were creating when they were doing it from their desk was very different. They were just like, "Smash."
 
Randall Ryan:
laugh
 
Heather Dame:
Like it's a very different thing now, when you're really having the full actor. It really is, it was a different beast. Voiceover looked different.
 
Randall Ryan:
Oh yeah.  Oh yeah.
 
Heather Dame:
If the game looks really rudimentary, like it used to, no one's going to balk when it doesn't sound like a real actor, because the game is rudimentary.  The whole thing has that kind of context to it.  But now everything looks so real to life, and it looks like a film, and the storylines are so intricate and games run the gamut.  Not everything is a war game. There's so many differing types of storylines and investment that the people playing the game have to have in order to keep playing your game and keep giving you their money, that you really do have to have real actors in there, who are really bringing something to the game that gets the people playing it invested, that they are in it with those people. It's also why you have such huge fandom in that world.
Randall Ryan:
Oh yeah.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah. And I think you just hit a really important point. It is about bringing acting back into voice acting, right?
Heather Dame:
It never left!
Brian Talbot:
Well, fair enough. But I mean, especially when games started out, it really was, it was go get Suzy or Jimmy down the hall.  We'll throw them in the booth and get a couple of sounds. But it really is now, I get asked from people, "I really want to do games and animation." I say, "Well, you need to go out to LA, and what acting classes do you take regularly?"
 
Randall Ryan:Right.
 
Brian Talbot:
And they're like, "Well, no, but I've done some games. I've done some parts in games." And so, I'm like, "Unh-uh, that's not the way it works.”  It can't. It really is about being an actor first.
Heather Dame:
Yes. I like to tell people, because a lot of people do voices, a lot of the fans now... So what's an interesting trend that's occurring right now, is with technology, everybody thinks they can be a voiceover actor.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yep.
 
Randall Ryan:
Yep.
 
Heather Dame:
Because all you have to do is build your booth, build it up and cool, I can go online and do something for 50 bucks and that makes me a voice actor. And so that takes away the emphasis on the acting, when they look at it from that way. And the reality is sure, you can go do someone's corporate video for 50 bucks online, and you can make that kind of money here and there and a little bit, but it doesn't make you a voice of actor in reality.
 
Randall Ryan:
No.  Not at all.
 
Heather Dame:
And you can also have a great voice, do many impressions, all sorts of things like that.  And that again, doesn't make you successful as a voiceover actor. Some of the most successful people we have, have really nondescript voices.
 
Randall Ryan:
 
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
So when someone comes and says to us like, "I've got this great voice,” or “I can do all these impressions." And they start to do impressions, the reality is that's not what it's about.
 
Brian Talbot:
No.
 
Heather Dame:
Whether it's a commercial, promos…it doesn't matter what realm you're talking about. And in fact, I think it's interestingly enough, like promos and trailers, they require a really great deal of acting.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mmm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
Because, it's really subtle and you have to connect to that copy. And it's pretty hard to connect to that copy. You listen to Scott Rummell read a trailer and he's connected to it. And if you were to look at that piece of trailer copy you could never produce what he produces and the emotion that he produces. You just couldn't, it's like brilliant.  And so, it's not even just in animation and games, it's across the industry, in every single aspect of it. There has to be an acting background and a connection to that script that you are reading, whether it's a commercial that you're selling for McDonald's or whether you're playing a lead role in an animated series. And it's one of those things where like in animation, it's very, these fans say, "Great, I can do all these impressions." And the thing I say to them is, "Cool, those jobs are already taken."
 
Randall Ryan:
laughs
Brian Talbot:
Right? Yeah. So what would you do with the role?
Heather Dame:
Right, exactly. Like those jobs are already taken. Bart Simpson, it's already taken; someone already has that job. So they're not really casting for that. What we're really casting for is people who can look at a character and create, and bring that character to life off the script, have it live and breathe, create the scene around it, and interact moment to moment with that scene around it.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And someone who can do that? And it's like a one man/one woman show in your head, you know?  And you create the entire thing and interact with it around you, and you breathe life into it that no one else can quite do. And the voice characteristic is just like a little brushstroke in your whole painting of your character. It's not the painting.
 
Brian Talbot:
Oh, yeah.
 
Heather Dame:
And so, it's that whole idea of “voice first” happens in trailers too. Get these guys with these really deep voices say, "I want to do trailers." And the reality is, you need to learn to be an actor first.
Brian Talbot:
Yep.
Randall Ryan:
Well, I think that's a holdover from radio though, because that's when the voice was the thing, and now it's acting first.  Voices can be, as you said, they're all over the map. I want someone with a high squeaky voice. I want someone with a reedy kind of... And actually you don't even necessarily think about that. I almost never give voice characteristic descriptions.  Almost never. It's all: what is the character, what does the character bring to the table there? The certain type of emotion, the mental aspect that they're coming from.
Heather Dame:
It's scene study, especially for the people who have gone to grad school for theater. Sometimes it takes them a minute to figure out how to harness their grad school abilities into voiceover. And I just look at them and I'm like, "It's scene study. It's the same thing. It's not different."
Brian Talbot:
Yep. That's exactly it.
Heather Dame:
It's not different at all. And they're like, "Oh, I get it now." You just spent a bunch of money learning this in grad school. And it's often the case with really well-trained actors too, that they need to learn the technical skill sets of how to take what they know as an actor and translate it into our medium as well. So I find I really enjoy finding really great actors and then helping them learn how to translate their skill in, or comedians and helping them learn to translate their skill in. That's typically how I find and develop talent, actually.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
Like that's kind of the modus operandi of how I've done it, is find a really great actor and then they can learn the skillset.
Randall Ryan:
How do you typically find talent? I mean, I know there's the whole ‘people send you reels’ and I don't want to get into that kind of stuff.
Heather Dame:
There's a thousand ways. There's no right way. I mean, we have a guy right now who we found, who's just a cold email he sent.  We took a listen to his demo and we're like, "Well, let's meet with him."
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And he is doing really well. So there's no right way. There's definitely winning the lottery can exist, you catch someone, an agent, in the exact right moment in the exact right day where they're like, "I have a minute to click on this demo." They click on it. And if it presents as an opportunity to their roster in that moment of something that we don't book, because that's what you're looking for, right? So when you submit to an agent, and I try to say this to people, like an agent doesn't respond to you or I don't respond to you, don't view it as a negative feedback on your talent. What it means is that you, right now and what you bring to the table, doesn't present as an opportunity to me and our roster right now. So it may be that your category and what you bring to the table is already something I have a couple of people in that category.  But if you're coming at me with something unique and something different that we don't book, and I've been getting that spec all the time and we're just not booking it, that's going to be really interesting to me.  Even if you're a little bit more raw and you need more training, but you're a great actor and you fit this spec that I don't book, I'm like, "Okay, cool. I will spend more time with you and help you develop these skill sets and send you to the right coach and do all these things to help you."
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
Because a year from now you'll be booking those jobs for me. 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Brian Talbot:
Yep
 
Heather Dame:
And it's a category, it's found money for both of us, because if we're not currently booking it, we don't currently have it on the roster, that presents as an opportunity to me. So it's the same thing as when I'm pitching business.  At the end of the day, when you go and try to sell something to someone, you do it as genuinely as you can, in whatever way makes the most sense to you and what you're able to bring to the table, and it will either present as an opportunity or not.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And that's really the key, right?  You're looking to present as an opportunity to someone, and you can't control what's on the other end.
 
Randall Ryan:
No.
 
Heather Dame:
So for me, it can be a cold email. It is much easier, honestly, to get me to listen to the demo, if you spell our names right.
Randall Ryan:
As someone who gets called Ryan all the time, I concur! Yeah. That's actually just a really good point, because I talk to people about networking all the time, and I've never really put it that way and I've not heard it that way, but that makes an enormous amount of sense. The fallacy of selling, of networking, is that you want to present your best foot.  You do, but you don't want present an incorrect picture, because you're going to get found out. So just go ahead and say, "Look, this is what I've done." I think that's just a great point. "This is what I've done. I would like to be doing more than this. I've done these small projects and I believe that I have the chops to do larger ones. It's just a matter of different scripts." That says a lot to somebody.
Heather Dame:
Well, it says to me, you know where you're at and you're going to work hard to get there, and that you're tenacious.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
There's a way of operating and personal responsibility you're taking in that moment, that shows me that you line up with the way that we operate. One of the things we have a reputation for is being extremely honest. And I wish I could say that was purposeful. It's like my default in life. It's my best and worst asset, is how honest I am. It's served me well so far in agenting. so we'll hope that will continue. I believe strongly in honesty, truth and reality, is if you can handle all of that and face it and look at it, then it gives you the power to choose what to do next and make a difference.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
Heather Dame:
But if an actor comes to us and asks us how they're doing, and the reality is that their reads aren't up to par and they're just not quite hitting, and they do need to do some work on their reads, we're going to tell them that. And if they don't want to hear it, what I've seen over and over again is they don't do the work and they don't succeed.
 
Randall Ryan:Right.
 
Heather Dame:
But when you have an actor who takes a look at that and says…no one wants to hear it, right?  First and foremost, no one wants to hear that. Like, that's just the reality.
 
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
 
Heather Dame:
That's not a circumstance an actor wants to hear/
 
Brian Talbot:
Yeah.  Yeah, yeah.
 
Heather Dame:
Bbut if they can take it and internalize it and look at it and say, "Okay, well now that I know that these are the things that are preventing me from booking, what am I going to do about it?”  And that gives them some power and control, which actors rarely have. It gives them something; it give them a way to move forward and deal in that reality. I also believe strongly that actors have a lot of responsibility to do a lot of the networking. And I say this a lot.  I feel like an agent and talent, the relationship should be a partnership. It shouldn't just be that I'm doing the pitching and then I deem whether or not you get those auditions, and I send them in and you either book it or you don't. And I don't tell you the information.  Randy, that would be back to your point earlier. That would be the reason why I'm comfortable with you building relationships with our talent, as long as you keep me in the loop, so I can make sure they get paid properly and all that jazz.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm. Right.
 
Heather Dame:
For me, I want to make sure the business part is there, but I don't begrudge you wanting to build a relationship with the talent you book with us. And I tell them up front, the new talent you book with us, I tell them, "Randy likes to have a conversation directly with you. If he forgets to CC me, loop me back in."
Randall Ryan:
Yes. And I tell them that too. Like if I don't send it to Heather or Maria or whoever, you don't even have to ask me, just put them on there.
 
Heather Dame:
Yep.
 
Randall Ryan:
It might have been an oversight, but it doesn't matter. Just always bring them in. I'm not trying to go behind anybody's back, so please bring them in so we're all on the same page and then everybody's cool.
Heather Dame:
But that's a part of me saying I'm comfortable with the talent building relationship. In fact, I feel it's their responsibility.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
So you happen to be the person who casts them and directs them, but in a lot of the places in voiceover, oftentimes the person casting the talent and talking to us is not the person the talent's working with in the booth.
Randall Ryan:
Correct.
Heather Dame:
Right.  And that's, I'd say more often than not, which means that I have no relationship with the person who's directing them in the booth.
 
Randall Ryan:
Right.
 
Heather Dame:
If it's the director of the show, and in fact I've met those people at networking events and like, they think I'm so uninteresting. They like the actors.
 
Randall Ryan:
laughs
 
Brian Talbot:
aughs
 
Heather Dame:
You're laughing, but literally, I thought that was a way to go for myself, because I was like, "Yeah, I'll build relationships with these people." That was something I tried at one point, and it turned out…because I'll go down any avenue and see how it goes as an agent.  And I was like, people aren't doing this, I should do that. And I did. And they were just like, "Cool. So you like negotiate contracts?"
 
Randall Ryan:
laughs
 
Heather Dame:
And then they would turn around to me, and almost inevitably they would have a friend who wanted to do voiceover, because they wouldn't know what to do with me and they would send me their demo.
 
Brian Talbot:
laughs
 
Heather Dame:
And that was it. Those people, but you put them in front of an actor and they're like, "Well I write for actors. I love actors. I'm writing this thing now, what are you doing? We're both creatives. And you make my scripts come to life. And isn't that so interesting."  And that's where they thrive, and that's the relationship the actor can build. And I can't build that for them.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
And those are their relationships, if they can hang on to them and build them. So those people will go from show to a different show, to a game company to, you know, they'll have a career.  Annd those actors may get to follow them if they build a relationship with them. I do view it as a full partnership. It's not only my job to build that relationship and get those auditions.  But it's also your job to build a relationship on your end. I basically view my job as getting the opportunities and then decreasing the competition.
 
Randall Ryan:
Mm hmm.
 
Heather Dame:
If you were just put it as simply as possible. 
 
Randall Ryan:
laughs
 
Heather Dame:
Those two things are a key aspect of booking jobs in voiceover for your actors as an agent. But then, the actor can really make a difference, because if the person on the other end there, the director, knows them and worked with them on another project, they're going to want to hear their read. And then if you get in front of people, you can book the job.
Brian Talbot:
That's incredibly sound advice from someone who really knows what she's talking about. I kind of wish there were more people out there like you, Heather.  We really appreciate it. And we appreciate the time you've given us today. And we also appreciate that you're incredibly busy. So, Randall?
Randall Ryan:
Brian Talbot, BT.
Brian Talbot:
Heather.
Heather Dame:
Bye guys. Thank you so much.
Randall Ryan:
Thank you Heather. As always!
Brian Talbot:
Thanks so much. Bye.
Heather Dame:
Bye.
Brian Talbot:
Heather Dame, Atlas Talent. Enough said. Let's Talk Voiceover is hosted by Randy Ryan, owner of Hamster Ball Studios, delivering the world's best talent, virtually anywhere. And me, Brian Talbot, actor and all around creative guy. If you have comments, questions, ideas for other show topics you'd be interested in hearing, or you just want to let us know what you think, you can reach us by sending an email to bt@letstalkvoiceover.com, or go to the website at www.letstalkvoiceover.com. That's www.letstalkvoiceover.com. Hit us up on the social sites, the streaming sites. Thanks for listening to Let's Talk Voiceover. We'll talk again, real soon.

Kristin Lennox is a working actress. That says a lot. She doesn't live on either coast. Instead, she hustles her career from the middle of the country, and has been for over two decades. A lot of people want to be a voice actor. Kristin provides insight into what it takes for anyone willing to put in the work from right where they are.

Wally Wingert is the voice you know, whether you know it or not. From the announcer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, to John Arbuckle on Cartoon Network’s “The Garfield Show”, Ant Man from the Avengers animated series, The Riddler from the video game series, “Batman: Arkham”, voices in popular mangas, including “Bleach”, Tiger & Bunny, and others, and as guest voices on Harvey Birdman, King of the Hill, The Simpsons and Family Guy. Wally is also one of the voices you’ll hear on Disney’s revamped “Pirates of the Carribean” ride. Find out from Wally what it's like to live your childhood dreams.

Tom Keegan is as authentic as it gets. That's why it's a treat to get to work under Tom's direction in games, animation, mo-cap, vo-cap and more. With roots in theater, film, animation and games, Tom is able to help actors translate authenticity into their roles, and has received accolades from his work, including a 2018 BAFTA award. Spend time with Tom, our guest on Episode 23, and you just might learn a thing or two! (It would be hard not to.) 

Dianne Weller is worldwide... literally. Starting her career in Australia, and working in Europe for the last 20 years, Dianne has extensive experience working in film, TV, theatre, radio, corporates, commercials and documentaries. Dianne keeps reinventing herself across entertainment mediums, and her perspective about that is fascinating. So eager to share, Episode 22 of Let's Talk: Voiceover is a fun one to listen to and learn from.  

Zach Hanks is a voice actor, coach and director in Atlanta. As a former Assistant Professor in theater, we talk about the difference between coaching in the classroom versus coaching in the "real world", and that transition from working for yourself to working for a paycheck. Zach brings a lot of interesting perspectives, as a former L.A. actor who stepped out of the Hollywood thing to walk down a slightly different path, and how he still makes his living as a voice actor today. Listen to Episode 17 of Let's Talk VoiceOver. 

We talk about voiceover. We have amazing people in our network. So, it only makes sense to talk with Rachael Naylor of The Voice Over Network in Episode 14, right? Rachael is a talent who put in a little effort to start a meetup group. What happened from there was an evolution into one of the world's most involved voiceover networks. We talk about what she sees as trends from her perspective. We talk about why she started a voiceover network as a home for voiceover professionals. And, we listen to that fabulous British accent. Brilliant!!