I want to be a voice actor! A surprise interview with Dan Green

Careers

(Source)

It was news to me that I would be interviewing anime voice actor Dan Green tonight.

Last month, I set up an interview/mini-voice acting lesson with Edge Studio, a New York based voice over coaching and production agency. I signed up for a Skype session with an anime voice over specialist. I had no idea that this instructor uses an alias for his anime work. He was none other than Dan Green, a voice actor I’d definitely heard of — and heard — before.

The man behind Yu-Gi-Oh!

As I tried getting my recording program to work (and it didn’t! Believe me, nobody is more upset about this than me), I had to ask Dan about Yu Gi Oh! the Abridged Series.

“I get asked to do Abridged impressions as often as I get asked to do Yu Gi Oh ones,” he said. Even though Abridged pokes fun of Yugi’s voice actor as much as Yugi himself, Dan thinks the series is hilarious and isn’t at all offended.

After I was able to get over this surprise, Dan introduced me to the basics of voice acting. According to him, it’s all about the range you create with your voice. He told me that most people have a much wider vocal range than they think. For example, after hearing my voice (never heard it? Listen to it on O-Talk), he accurately guessed that I was pretty young, but supposed with training I could play any character from a teenage girl to a grandmother.

Voice acting techniques

Dan led me through seven techniques that voice actors use to improve their voices: pitch, texture, nasality, diction, dynamic range, volume and pace. It sounded like I was listening to seven different people over the phone. (When I told him that, he jokingly remarked, “you should see the inside of my mind.”) When Dan raised his pitch, he sounded just like Yugi, but by lowering his voice and increasing volume and diction, suddenly I heard the Pharaoh. By giving his voice a gravelly texture, he started to sound like the bad guys he played in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

He said these techniques are like “knobs you can turn up and down” to increase your vocal ability.

Many people already have ample control over their voices, but Dan said that it’s unlikely that an anime fan could make the transition to voice actor without any lessons. His usual suggestion is to take at least five in order to get these techniques down.

Experiences for aspiring actors

“It’s more than just the voice. Even if you have natural talent, you might be competing against actors with natural talent as well as training and experience,” said Dan.

He used fansubs for an example. “Not to diss on fansubs since it’s great people are doing them, you can recognize the difference between a professional voice actor and a fan.”

Dan said that acting and singing are two examples of experiences that can help aspiring voice actors go from fan subs to anime studios. He recommends acting experience because voice over directors speak like they’re speaking to actors: “I need this kind of energy, this kind of emotion.” Singing is helpful because dubbing anime requires a good sense of rhythm. When you’re trying to give a genuine performance while your lines are restricted by how long the animated character’s mouth opens and closes for, a sense of timing is key.

Pursuing voice acting

At the end of our session, I asked Dan what would be the next step if I really wanted to take voice acting lessons. I would first have a one hour private session where Dan would test my vocal range and control. After that, he’d make an estimate for how many classes I’d need. Sometimes he suggests six or more for inexperienced actors, and other times it’s just three. Finally, it’d be time to make a demo reel of a few character voices to send to anime studios.

I came for an interview, but I had so much fun I might actually sign up for classes. But at $577 for Dan’s recommended five classes, it’s something I’ll have to think about. It’s probably a better investment for people who want to seriously pursue voice acting than for someone like me who just wants to try out weird voices and listen to Dan’s hilarious impressions.

Your turn. Would you consider taking voice acting lessons? Have you ever tried them out?

How to get on staff at a convention

Fandom

If you work at an office, you already know what it’s like. Long hours, dry meetings you’re not sure of the point of, bosses you don’t always like but still have to suck up to, menial tasks you thought you were above.

Of course, there are two big differences. First, you don’t get paid. And second, you and all of your coworkers are more passionate about this job than anything else in the world.

There are some practical reasons, too, for getting on staff at a con. You’ll save money on lodging and food, make friends, and meet the movers and shakers of your fandom. Here’s how to get on staff at a con.

Show your dedication

Anime USA was the first convention to give me filming and interviewing privileges despite my student status, lack of press credentials, or more than basic knowledge of how to operate a video camera. But through a sense of duty brought on by gratefulness as well as some student ingenuity, I produced three mini-films about the convention.

When I was finished, I put the videos up on my blog and shared them with the staff. I showed them to two of the Vice-Chairs, Rob and Theo, when I ran into them at another convention. Afterward, they told me they were looking for a marketing director and asked if I’d like to fill the position. Gobsmacked, I said I’d love to.

At the time, I thought they were really impressed by my technical skills. But I have since learned that Theo is a talented filmmaker while Rob is a professional Web designer. My student film didn’t show them I would be a good addition to the staff. It was the fact that I had enough passion for their convention to make a film in the first place.

Don’t give up

I’ve never outright said this on my blog, but I knew it and I know the rest of the staff knew it — I was a terrible marketing director. Passion is great, but being a 23-year-old student with no job experience is another thing. I’d never even volunteered at a convention before, and here I was managing my own staff.

I liked to think of my team as scrappy. I recruited my boyfriend as my assistant director since unlike me; he had staff experience. Chris, the graphic designer, was a friend from college. My recently-promoted press liason was a soft-spoken college student. Siham, bless her, was a student about my age with lots of experience, but chose to run the maid cafe and host club so she didn’t have time to work as a director. I am certain that working with me must have been trying. Theo did promotion work and his brother, Greg, was the con’s longtime program book designer.

I was worried about screwing up to the point of paralysis. But I invited them all to a party at my boyfriend’s apartment, where I served homemade onigiri. My first mistake was that I spent more time making snacks than planning the meeting. Things went off the rails almost immediately. Siham took the shy press liaison under her wing and I could see his eyes bulging with the new pressures of his job. Nobody thought of me as the group leader since Mark, a staff member who was really high up in the ranks, showed up to the meeting, too.

After the meeting, my press liaison quit with an email. I wanted to quit, too. But I didn’t because I love Anime USA. Some things I did terribly, like mismanaging press and leaving poor Tom in the guests department to figure out the interview schedule. Other things, like the prospectus and official blog, were my own brand new additions. I was really proud and hoped that the things I improved outweighed my mistakes. But I wasn’t surprised when Mark demoted me and put a more experienced staff member in charge for 2011.

Now, I’m Anime USA’s press liaison, a job that I’m much more adept at handling. But if I had quit halfway, I would probably just have been given a kick out the door. Passion got me the job. But effort helped me stay on board.

Bring new ideas

After working on Anime Boston’s official blog, I wanted nothing more than to bring that idea to Anime USA. It was a great way to archive the most important events of the con all in one place, plus give people who couldn’t attend events accurate coverage. Everyone at Anime USA was on board with the idea but incredibly busy. If I really wanted this blog, it was up to me to make it happen.

Rob gave me a domain at blog.animeusa.org, and I set to work customizing a WordPress theme. I recruited bloggers by giving them writing tests. I tried to get Internet working consistently in our convention hotel. And most importantly, I promoted the blog so people would know it existed. And I did this in the most eye-catching way I could think of, by putting QR codes all around the convention center.

My convention-eve at FedEx printing strange symbols paid off. People paid attention to the codes and some even made their own spinoffs. I loved that part; fan innovation is my favorite part of fandom. The convention got thousands of attendees, so I was happy when the official blog received thousands of hits.

Fans and geeks are brilliant people. We’re on the cutting edge of new technologies and trends. And yet, when it comes to our conventions, we’re so caught up in getting the basic necessities fulfilled that we’re sometimes behind the curve. That explains why we’re only recently using Conventionist and blogging. New people know these things can be just as important to attendees as a well run dealer’s room. They keep new ideas flowing.

—
While I’m also on staff at the much larger Anime Boston (I was recently promoted to a producer role on their Creative Media Team), I will always be thankful for Anime USA to giving my start in convention reporting and staffing. Even though I didn’t have it on my resume at the time, Anime USA gave me the experience I rely on the most at my actual office job. In fact, my number one suggestion for unemployed geeks is to get on staff at a con.

By the way, I didn’t change any names in this article. If you’re at Anime USA this November and you see these staff members, be sure to say hi. And tell them I sent you.

How to be lucky

Journalism

I can hardly even believe it, but for two days, I was famous on the Internet! I got a deluge of emails, my blog got thousands of views and my favorite sites found me worth covering. My friends, the ones I admire most, started coming to ME for advice. For those two days, I felt like I was a different person.

Of course, this isn’t even worth bragging about. It wasn’t about me. It was about a series of factors that came together, and I was in the right place at the right time.

It was about luck.

Luck is random. It’s not something you can cultivate. However, I’ve learned that there are a few ways to increase your chances.

Convince people to like you

Susannah said it best. She had a lot of smart, talented entrants to her contest. But she picked me because I was likeable, and she could see herself working with me. That was lucky.

You don’t have to change to be likeable. You just have to find the right boss. It helps that Susannah sometimes writes about porn and I sometimes write about Japanese fetishes like cat ears. That’s certainly not something that would make me likable to every person, but in this case, it worked.

So really, the best way to be somebody people like is to like yourself. Be shameless about your personality. Don’t do ANYTHING half way. Some people will find you really obnoxious. But others will find you irresistible! Think about it — nobody wants to read a blog that doesn’t piss some people off.

Do stupid, risky things

The best thing I learned in grad school was to never play by the rules. A company doesn’t have a hiring page? Send them your resume anyway. Maybe they weren’t hiring… until they saw that you’d be perfect.

In a way, it was stupid of me to enter Susannah’s contest. At least in an economical sense. It’s like entering the lottery — there are much better ways to earn money than to try for a chance to win it, even if you don’t make as much. Likewise, there are much better ways for me to get my writing published than to enter a contest for a sliver of a chance. I could have spent that time writing on my blog, for example, and be guaranteed publication.

Somebody once told me that everything that makes life worth living is outside of your comfort zone. That’s why this introvert, who’d like nothing better than to spend Saturday night watching anime alone, makes an effort to go out whenever possible. I list networking meetups for journalists on my calendar, and try to attend one once a month.

I know there are opportunities out there, but they won’t come to me. Unless you’re a really big deal, they won’t come to you, either. We have to seek them out.

Be jealous of other people

Sad but true, this is maybe my chief motivator to succeed in life.

I am always discovering strong, successful, brilliant women like Gala Darling, Amanda Hocking, Alexandra Franzen, Jessica Hische, and now Susannah Breslin, who absolutely amaze me. The only thing I have in common with them is that I am also a writer and a creative-type person. In every other way, they are ten times better than me. And so, I am constantly pushing myself to emulate them.

Let’s say you spent all my time around people who don’t really care about their careers. Maybe they’re great people, but they work dead end jobs and are fine with it. They just choose to focus on other things.

Chances are, you’d start to be like them, too.

It makes sense. If you look at the people in your life and feel like you’re doing pretty well comparatively, you won’t feel the need to reach your full potential. But thanks to the Internet, this is almost a defunct way to live. If you can’t find people online who have already done the things you dream of doing, you’re not looking hard enough. I am surrounded by powerful role models who inspire me to work harder whenever I turn on my computer.

—
Isn’t it interesting that when we hear about moments of success, we never hear about the subsequent decline? When we read about people who are successful, we hear about their “big break” and then a constant rise to the top. That’s not effortless. The beginning was luck. After that, successful people work tirelessly to keep it up.

Already, my inbox is empty and my blog hits are falling back to normal. The tireless search light of the Internet has moved on, just as it always does.

You can bet I am going to keep doing what I do and taking risks, doing my darndest to make it happen again.

Feeling lucky? Be sure to enter the Supermeow! Store giveaway by “liking” Mara’s Facebook page. There are only 15 entrants so far, so your chances are excellent.

How I ended up writing about cat ears, maids, and furries for Forbes

Journalism

After my article is published on Forbes today, everyone from my grandmother to my mom’s book club will know what I do in my spare time. After today, any potential employer that Googles my name will immediately see the things that make me stand out, for better or for worse. After today, I will have no other identity. I will be the Otaku Journalist.

I’m just as surprised that I won as I was the day I found out. I had some very tough competition in this contest. Several of the runner ups focused on “hard” news stories, the stories you see in the paper. Some of them have day jobs at newspapers. Meanwhile, I write about the stuff of Style section satires, the stuff nobody takes seriously but fans.

When I entered the contest, I read the prompt at least ten times. Then I went back and read the Pink Slipped archives. I found a link to Susannah Breslin’s blog and read that, too. And then, after spending hours reading, I spent a comical four or five minutes writing my contest entry pitch to Susannah. It was raw and a little emotional. A little braver than the things I usually write. But still completely, unabashedly, me. I pressed send before I could change my mind.

Unnerved, I did my best to forget about the contest. I didn’t tell my best friend, my boyfriend, or my parents I had even entered. So when I found out I’d won, I had a lot to explain. I was elated. But I was also terrified. How could I possibly live up to what everyone was expecting?

My first draft of the article was like an Oscar speech, listing each of my accomplishments and thanking every person who has ever inspired me to pursue journalism. It was also incredibly boring. Luckily, Susannah is a fantastic editor. She encouraged me to scrap the whole draft and look at the assignment in a different way, one paragraph at a time.

“Write me one paragraph and write it fast,” she wrote. She told me to send it to her in 10 minutes. I wrote for 10 minutes and sent what I had. Then, I wrote the next part. And the next. There’s no way she could have known that’s how I wrote the contest prompt, too. But here was what she had wanted: a real story. My draft was done in one night. Finessing took a lot longer, but by that point, the message was already there.

Now it’s up and out there where anybody can read it. I wrote about my experiences and my frustrations and how my life never feels as meaningful as it does when I’m reporting. In a way, it’s still an article about the people that inspired me to be a journalist.

As I said in my article, “journalism opportunities are everywhere.” And Susannah Breslin just gave me one hell of an opportunity. Thank you, Susannah. I’ve loved every minute.

Welcome to otaku journalist 2.0

Uncategorized

It’s June 6 and I’ve kept my promise. Now, let’s never leave each other for that long ever again!

Welcome to the new Otaku Journalist. Same as the old Otaku Journalist, I’m happy to say, but with a few upgrades for the better. For one, we’re now running on a completely custom WordPress theme that I have creatively named, “Otaku Journalist.”

Otaku Journalist’s theme is based on Sandbox, a great skeleton theme for anyone who is learning how to build their own WordPress theme. I spent nearly two weeks hunkered down on my localhost with Sandbox, MAMP, and my handy list of WordPress tutorial links… but eventually I realized I needed some help. Luckily, Mara K. came to the rescue! As you can tell by her fully custom blog theme, this lady knows what she’s doing. Thanks again, Mara, for helping me make this happen on such short notice.

The origin of the design is a hand drawn wireframe in my Moleskine. It went through a few iterations on paper before I got brave enough to test it out on the computer. (This is one of the later versions.)

Next, I built up a design concept using Adobe Illustrator. I knew I wanted to keep the blog’s signature bright blue, but I wanted to make everything bolder. I used 960.gs to design it so I wouldn’t have to worry about it looking good on a variety of screens and browser windows.

Then, I spent some time ruining CSS divs. They can be pretty tricky, and I’m totally self taught in all things computer. While I learned a little more every day I worked on the site, I knew there was no way I was going to meet my June deadline going at it alone.

Here’s the site starting to take shape under Mara’s skillful hand. Starting to look familiar!

Finally, here’s a screenshot of how the website is intended to look, give or take — we’re still fixing a few last minute snafus. (If it doesn’t look this way to you, send me an email ASAP and I’ll do my best to troubleshoot!)

Now, let’s go over some of the new features:

  • Big ol’ content space, perfect for more in-depth articles and bigger, sharper pictures.
  • A welcome page that lets you know just what this site is about.
  • A projects page. If you’ve ever been interested on working on a collaborative fandom-driven project with me, check here.
  • New copy on all my existing pages, too! Check out my bio* and archives.

*I’ll update this post when the bio is up.

Let me tell you what else this means: regular updates three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday! I’ve had over a month to write up sparkling new content so I won’t be falling behind anytime soon, even if I do sprain my ankle again! It feels so good to be back on track.

What do you think of the new Otaku Journalist? Let me know in an email or the comments.