Voice Over experts, Bob Bergen (voice of Porky and other Looney Toons characters), Joyce Castellanos (former audio director/producer for NBC, Disney Channel) Bill Holmes (commercial producer/director/demo producer/ The Voice Over Doctor) share their insights about the industry in this NEW! Voicebank/Voice Registry Roundtable. You can reach Joyce Castellanos at promoteach@aol.com. Check out Bob Bergen/Bill Holmes upcoming workshop Sept. 27 & 28 in Los Angeles.

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This Voice Registry podcast is brought to you by Voicebank.net

Tracy: Hi everybody I am Tracy Pattin and I am here at Compost Productions in North Hollywood yet again. This time we are going to do something a little different, we have some sort of round table. I have a panel of experts that are going to talk everything voice over. We have animation voice actor extraordinaire Bob Bergen.

Bob: (Character Voice) Hi!

Tracy: Wahoo and Bob has voiced hundreds of cartoons, he is in commercials, promos, radio imaging, he’s been the voice on Looney Toons for Porky, Tweety, Marvin the Martin, Henry Hawk, Sylvester.

Bob: Sylvester Jr.

Tracy: Sylvester Jr.

Bob: Yeah, Sylvester has a son that nobody knows who Sylvester Jr.’s mother is but he is the legitimate child of Sylvester the cat.

Tracy: Interesting, okay and then we have promo, trailer, producer, director Joyce Castellanos.

Joyce: Yay!

Tracy: And also teacher of promo and trailers.

Bob: Brilliant

Tracy: And she has been doing that for twenty five years, you have been producing and directing promos and trailers and your teaching.

Joyce: I am and now for almost ten years now.

Bob: Use the mic.

Tracy: Great

Bob: Ten Years, there you go (Laughs)

Tracy: And then we have Bill Holmes commercial, voice over teacher, producer, director, film maker, you do just about everything.

Bill: And the Voice Over Doctor.

Tracy: And yes, the Voice Over Doctor. On this podcast that we do, we do a whole series.

Bill: (Laughs) Tracy Pattin is making me famous.

Tracy: Yes

Joyce: (Laughs)

Tracy: We will get you a new doctor’s outfit soon

Bob: Are we going to talk about your crap’s table escapades too?

Bill: Well eventually

Bob: Because we want to make sure that this is a well rounded podcast.

Bill: Oh yeah, no we will talk about gambling.

Tracy: Oh good, this will be a very balanced podcast. So let’s start with Bob.

Bob: Alright, well sure.

Tracy: Bob Bergen

Bob: Yeah!

Tracy: Okay, so everybody wants to know you are the guy, the animation guy. Most of my listeners know who you are.

Bob: I love these people, I pay them well.

Tracy: (Laughs) And so tell us how you got into animation, how did you get into it?

Bob: Well see a lot of people want to get into voice over, want to do cartoons, want to do promos, want to do commercials. I wanted to be Porky Pig since I was five years old and my mom said “You can’t be Porky Pig your Jewish”

Joyce: (Laughs)

Bob: And I didn’t know what that meant because we basically ate BLT’s and ham.

Tracy: (Laughs)

Bob: So

Bill: (Laughs)

Bob: We moved to LA when I was fourteen, not for me to be Porky Pig but my dad took a job and I picked up the phone book and started calling anything that said animation and cartoons. And through some connections I studied with Daws Butler and I met Mell Blank and I crashed a recording session and I stalked him. I got my first agent in cartoon a week out of high school, I found out that A. Mell Blank was still doing Porky Pig but also B. You have to do other things in this business; even if you have a real specific goal like that you can’t just make that it. People know me as these characters but that is really a teeny percentage of my day to day work, mostly it is commercials and promos and imaging exedra. So I found out that I had to get into the voice over industry to be available to be professionally available when opportunity knocked which was 1990, that is when I started doing the Looney Toons characters.

Tracy: Before you got started doing the Looney Toons, you practiced all of these characters on your own.

Bob: Sure yeah I mean this was before VCR’s or Beta Maxes.

Bill: (Laughs)

Bob: I know, before silent movies we were so old.

Bill: (Old Voice) You were doing a wonderful job.

Joyce: (Laughs)

Bob: I would put my tape recorder in front of the TV and I would tape record cartoons and I would memorize the cartoons and I remember when I was about five that I said I think there is one person doing all of these voices.

Bill: See that is where I made my mistake I was recording Adam Twelve.

Joyce, Tracy: (Laughs)

Bob: Oh, was that you basically you are an expert on Kent McCord.

Bill: I never became a cap and I never got to do Kent McCord stuff.

Bob: (Theme Song)

Joyce: (Laughs)

Tracy: So Bob how did you go from practicing these voices, how did you get from that point I know my listeners are dyeing to know this I mean here your practicing these voices, you are recording the cartoons and you end up taking it all to the next level. How did you do that part?

Bob: Well when we moved to LA I found out that this was a business called Voice Over. I heard voice over’s on commercials but I didn’t realize that there was not only a business and a name but a craft. I took classes from everybody that offered. I studied with Daws Butler, I studied Bryan Cummins, I studied with Joanie Gerber, and I studied with Michael Bell, Louise Channis. If they offered a class I took it. Well they were $10.00 back then.

Bill: Yeah, right

Bob: They have gone up a little bit.

Tracy: The good ole’ days

Bob: My mother had fit when they went up to $12.00, this is the same lady who every years says “Honey, you should raise the prices for your classes”

Joyce, Tracy: (Laughs)

Bob: So I studied voice over, back then they wouldn’t hire you if you were under 18 today they will but back then they wouldn’t.

Tracy: Okay

Bob: So I had to wait until I was 18 and I was of legal age. I had studied for four solid years and not just voice over but acting and scene study and improve.

Tracy: That is another very interesting thing about your background, it is really important to be balanced.

Bob: I have not met any successful voice actor’s ever and when I say successful I mean the major players who are not either trained or have a background in theatre, improve, acting, music, something other than voice over. I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they do that. People tell me I have such a great voice.

Tracy: Right

Bob: Well there is no such thing as a great voice because there is no such thing as a bad voice or only great actors and bad actors. So these are the people who go spending thousands of dollars in voice over classes without becoming a solid actor first. My personal opinion is that improve is the greatest training anybody could ever do.

Bill: And I totally agree

Tracy: Too shay, yes Bill Applebaum has been on this podcast talking about that very thing because I think that it is so very important. So you have studied improve over the years.

Bob: I studied improve, I studied acting, solid, my technique of choice was Meisner but I tried everybody to see what worked for me.

Bill: And that is very important

Joyce: Yes

Bill: That you go to different people and you get different opinions and you know I mean I studied at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago one of the best schools in the country. I like to brag that I have been thrown out of some of the best schools in the country.

Joyce, Tracy: (Laughs)

Bill: And the Goodman was one of them it was not the technique for me but I also studied with a guy in Chicago who his name was Bud Meyer who used to teach at Northwestern University I still think he does. And he was the guy who I latched on to and I understood what he was telling me as an actor and when I was at Goodman I just didn’t understand what they were telling me so I moved on.

Bob: We are getting to a place right now in the world of voice over where because under $500 you can have a home set up, microphone, program, you can pursue voice over. But because you can purchase it t a relatively cheap price people are not training.

Bill: Right

Bob: They are not getting prepared, so just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I worked with a hand held tape recorder that was what I worked from that was my homework, this is what I worked with and I did just fine. People aren’t doing that training that I think is necessary.

Bill: And you also have to understand that you know people like Bob and I who are out in the field acting every day. When we tell people in our classes that you need to read out loud every day and you need to practice every day and you have to do this. We are doing it everyday, we don’t practice at home anymore but we audition.

Bob: Well we do but we call it an audition.

Tracy: Right

Joyce: Exactly

Bill: I mean this morning before you all came to the studio I just banged out three auditions that I sent to Atlanta.

Tracy: Yeah

Bill: I have an agent in Atlanta, so I am auditioning every day and that is my practice.

Bob, Joyce, Tracy: Right

Bill: That’s how I get better.

Joyce: And having the home studio is really important.

Bob: It is so great

Joyce: Because once you do need to train, you need to have the right techniques and you need to understand the technology and the styles and all that. But having the opportunity to work at home to work at home to practice that is very important but you can’t for go the training because the training gives you the tool you need to do the right practice.

Tracy: And Joyce now you have done, you have done promo and trailer which is a whole other area from animation.

Joyce: Completely

Tracy: So you started out directing and producing and working with actors at the WB, Disney and NBC.

Joyce: NBC was my first area, yeah.

Tracy: And so many of my listeners are always asking the promo industry and how to get in and what does it take? So what does it take?

Bill: Ha-ha me too, I am curious myself.

Joyce: Well like I said every area has it’s own techniques so training is really important it is a different type of technique from commercial, narration, from animation. Each one has its own tools so the training is very important because you have to understand that you are working to picture for promo and you have to understand to create a timing clock and to make those adjustments and how to tell your story. It is all about acting; it is about telling your story honestly.

Tracy: So it is always working to picture, promo is always.

Joyce: 95% of the time you are working to picture because they have created a thirty second, a twenty second, fifteen second or a ten second spot that has to fit. They have to know that you are fitting into what they want.

Bill: And for those of you who don’t know, working to picture means you are looking at the television screen, you are seeing what you are going to do.

Bob: You are seeing the video.

Joyce: Exactly, you are seeing the video and you are hearing the music, you are hearing the sound bytes, you have you have to act.

Bill: You have to plug your voice right in.

Joyce: And with that, that is where you get more of the acting because you are acting and responding to what is being said and what are you seeing.

Bob: And can I, I want to share because I did my very first promo job with Joyce.

Tracy: Uhuh

Bob: I was the fill in guy at the Disney Channel when their regular announcer would go on vacation and I eventually became the main voice for about five years. But I had never studied promo; nobody had ever told me how to do it. The way the studio worked, the producer Joyce and the engineer were in one room and I was in another. And I am watching the monitor and they are watching the monitor and there is a little window when the announcer is supposed to talk and I have got my lines in front of me but nobody told me here is how it’s done. And after that clip was done and I was really quiet, Joyce really sweetly says “Well let’s just try that again” and I ran again and it was quiet and I am waiting for somebody to say talk or something on the screen to say this is where you talk.

Joyce, Bill, Tracy: (Laughs)

Bob: And after about twenty, thirty times Joyce very sweetly says “Honey that is where you talk”

Joyce, Bill, Tracy: (Laughs)

Bob: And I went “Oh, okay” and I learned by the seat of my pants because when I was hired to bet he voice of the Disney Channel I would get twenty thirty promos a day. And the amount of sweat that came from my brow that first day because that was not easy. Thank God there are workshops for people to study the technical. It is storytelling, it is absolutely storytelling.

Joyce: There is the technical side and then there is the creative side.

Tracy: And in your classes you work on that too. And that is the beeps right, the one, two three?

Bob: We don’t have beeps

Tracy: Oh, not even beeps.

Bob: Not for promos

Joyce: You might, you might

Bob: Do they do beeps now, those lucky people!

Joyce: In some studios you will, when we work we don’t have beeps we have time code. You have to get used to, if you can do it without the beeps you are going to be fine when you have that.

Bob: But we didn’t have time code at Disney Channel.

Joyce: No, no

Bob: We just had windows of silence

Joyce: That’s, right

Bob: yeah

Joyce: Each place is different, so you have to learn how to prepare yourself for it. How to do the breathing, how to get prepare to start.

Bob: I also say that one trick that she taught me, I don’t even know if you know you taught me this but have your mouth open ready to go. Don’t have your mouth closed at the line, have your mouth wide open and ready to go because it takes time.

Tracy: Oh

Joyce: Because you have your deep breath while the sound bytes are coming and then you talk.

Bob: She taught me that the very first day and it was like I heard the angels, Hallelujah!

Bill: (Laughs)

Bob: It was such a, the end of the miracle worker, he gets it yes!

Joyce, Tracy: (Laughs)

Tracy: This has been Part One of my Round Table interview with Bob Bergen, Bill Holmes and Joyce Castellanos join me next time for Part Two. And don’t forgot Bob Bergen and Bill Holmes have their upcoming workshop here in Los Angeles on September 27^th and 28^th, you can find out all about it on BobBergen.com

This Voice Registry podcast was brought to you by Voicebank.net

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