00:08Hi, my name is Dempsey, and this is a question for Keith, now that you're, since you're playing
00:14a Swedish character at Torbjörn, have you ever considered learning Swedish?
00:19Yes. I've considered it. I'm sure I've considered it. It seems like it would be a lot to learn.
00:27They have great apps for it, though, now, so I have thought about it.
00:33Alright, next one. We're going to choose over this section here. Agrituko.
00:41Hi, my name is Candace, and my question is, what skill set do you think is the most important to
00:47have when you're going into voice acting?
00:49Like, we know having unique voice is important, but what other skills would you want to look for if you
00:54were doing an audition yourself?
00:55Wow. Imagination. A very active imagination. A lot of times, what I'm learning, because honestly, voice acting has been one
01:04branch of the acting tree that I've come to pretty late in the game, and it's the place where I
01:09get to do the most outrageous things.
01:13You know, because if you think about it, voice acting, I can be a little Indian woman, I can be
01:17a dragon, I can be a chair.
01:19I don't know why I keep saying a chair. I love being a chair. She talks about it all the
01:23time.
01:23I got a sofa yesterday on the live feed. I feel so bad.
01:26She called it a food feed.
01:28Hey guys.
01:30Yeah, sit on me like everyone else.
01:33What's your name, chair?
01:35Cherry.
01:38Are you Peewee Herman's chair?
01:40No, and everybody thinks that. I don't get that paycheck.
01:44You should really change your name because that's Peewee Herman's chair.
01:47Uh oh.
01:48It's kind of...
01:49No, I'm famous already.
01:50I hate my life. I hate my life.
01:54No, I don't know. But I mean, you can be anything you want.
01:56And so, even that moment where I'm like, no, that's not a good enough chair.
01:59Like, I would want to play and think about all the different ways you could be that thing, and it
02:03doesn't necessarily sound like you think it would sound.
02:06Like that character, who was I talking about this the other day?
02:09In The Secret Life of Cats, the bunny, played by Captain Hart.
02:12Yes.
02:12Like, okay, you see a bunny, and you think it's gonna be,
02:15it's fluffy and goofy and blah blah.
02:17And then all of a sudden, it's Kevin Hart.
02:19With an evil eye.
02:20That kind of thing of not allowing the visual to keep your imagination from flying.
02:29That right there, I think, is really, really important.
02:32Yeah, and first and foremost, voice acting is acting.
02:36So, I mean, just being able to act.
02:37I mean, that's the most important thing is people do voiceover that don't do a whole bunch of voices.
02:41They just have one great voice and they're really good at commercials or trailers or promos.
02:44And they sell you products.
02:46Right.
02:46And you can be really successful.
02:48So, but if you're talking about like animation and that kind of stuff, I would say like flexibility
02:52is, because you have so much, there's so much possibility, the range is endless.
02:56So being passive.
03:01Oh, I'm curious about that!
03:10I know.
03:13Yeah.
03:18I know, I know.
03:19I know.
03:20You're getting the right choice.
03:23No, I'm sorry. That was for comedy and make it stop.
03:26Make it stop.
03:39What is going on?
03:42She made us do it.
03:44She made us. She started it.
03:46She started it.
03:47I know there's a curtain here.
03:49We need him. We need him alive.
03:51Don't do that to him.
03:53He's never going to come back for a panel
03:55with us again if we make him do this.
03:58I had to bribe him with a Winston.
04:00I know we did. We promised him lunch.
04:03That's why he's here.
04:04The other kind of flexibility.
04:07Not that one.
04:08Because if you're doing like on camera stuff or on stage
04:11or whatever, you're probably only going to be
04:13you're going to be a little bit like
04:15for a character event, you might look at
04:16like you said a bunny and it's supposed to be
04:18you think it's going to sound this way.
04:19Usually you don't go that far off
04:21if it's something that's on camera.
04:23You know what I mean?
04:23You don't just go, I've got this crazy, crazy idea
04:25for this doctor. What if?
04:27You don't usually do that.
04:29But with animation, you do.
04:31And you might show up for session and you think
04:33even if your audition was one way,
04:35they may go, we loved your audition
04:37and we liked your body at work, but we want you
04:39to try this. And you're like, oh,
04:40nothing like what I did at the audition at all.
04:43So you have to be ready to let everything go
04:46that you thought ahead of time
04:47while you were driving your session you're going to do
04:49and just stomp on it, burn it to the ground
04:51and go, let's start over
04:53and do something different.
04:54Until you get to the right thing.
04:55So flexibility is very important.
05:03And very seldom, when a new show up, I noticed very seldom
05:07are they actually voiced by black actors.
05:09And as somebody who's interested in getting into voiceover
05:13and dumping, what steps do you think I can take to change this?
05:18That's interesting.
05:21This is really strange, but I find in animation in general,
05:26sometimes that's like a niche that you wouldn't think it would be
05:28because you think there have to be a lot of black voiceover actors.
05:33But you can kind of actually get work being black
05:35and being a good voice actor there
05:37because there are certain roles that they do want
05:38somebody who's black to play that.
05:40And like with anime, I am black
05:42and I've auditioned for black characters
05:44and had white guys beat me out for them.
05:46So I mean, it depends.
05:48But how would you change that?
05:51I don't know.
05:52It's a tricky thing.
05:54I was going to say, I've been working with young animators
05:57who are doing short films because they want to tell their story.
06:00So I don't know if you know people who are in college doing animation
06:04or anything like that, but I've been voicing characters for friends
06:07in their little short films that are about Latina little girls
06:11because there's not enough of them.
06:13This came up in another panel as well.
06:16It's just this beautiful black woman who wants to do her animation.
06:19I said, go do it because we need more of that.
06:22And I know it sounds silly, but that short film could go to a film festival
06:25or it goes online and it goes viral.
06:27Or it doesn't, but you start your own little production company
06:31and this is what you're doing.
06:31And I know it sounds really hard to do, but just baby steps
06:34and you'll get there, you know?
06:35And then hopefully you can also dub some anime and be awesome at it.
06:39But I think that us creating our own work is part of adding to that,
06:44to this crazy business and making it more diverse.
06:48Yeah. And voiceover too.
06:50I don't know that there's always a stress put on accurately casting
06:55so many different characters.
06:57I mean, it's like, oh, you have to be this to play this.
06:59So black actors play all kinds of different characters.
07:01They also don't make me play only black people.
07:04They don't, you know what I mean?
07:05Or only even men or only humans or only like we voice whatever.
07:10You too can be a chair.
07:11And so...
07:13Hashtag you too can be a chair.
07:16So the opportunities are theirs.
07:17For me, where I see that there are issues in Hollywood with casting,
07:21it has to do with where the opportunities are not there.
07:25So there are opportunities for black actors to do voiceover,
07:28to play black characters, white characters, any character.
07:30It's kind of whatever you sound.
07:32I do get in Hollywood when we can't get a lead,
07:35Asian actor ever.
07:37Or we can't get a...
07:38It's harder to get like...
07:38It took forever to get like a lead, you know,
07:40black character in like the Star Wars or a big movie or...
07:43And there's also a history behind that.
07:45Where white actors were playing black characters and white actors
07:48were playing Asian characters and Native American characters.
07:52So there's a past history that's not nice.
07:54It's not good.
07:55And so in Hollywood there's somewhat of a problem
07:57and I definitely agree with that.
07:59With voiceover I see it more as...
08:01There are some shows where it's very important for the producers
08:04to actually have everything be true to what it's supposed to be
08:07and there are other shows where the producers don't care so much
08:09but they're not going to not hire you because you're black.
08:11You just might be playing not a black character.
08:14Do you know what I mean?
08:14Like an anime would almost hurt you more
08:16because there's less black characters.
08:17There really are.
08:18So in Japan they have to start making more black characters
08:21but there's not as many...
08:23I have no idea what the ratio would be
08:24but you guys know.
08:25It's pretty low.
08:26So if you were forced to only play that
08:29you would have less of a career.
08:30Does that make sense?
08:32So, but you know, hopefully...
08:33We want to audition for all sorts of things.
08:35You know, all the things.
08:36If we can, if I can sound British, let's do it.
08:39You know what I mean?
08:40So...
08:40Yeah, because British people are not having a hard time working.
08:43Right, they're not at all.
08:44No, but I will say early on in my career,
08:47it's strange, early on in my career
08:49as a theater and as a TV actor.
08:52Because there weren't so many Indian roles,
08:55it didn't matter that I was Indian.
08:58It just...
08:58I just went in and auditioned
09:00and it just...
09:00There happened to be...
09:01Very rarely were they like,
09:02well you can't do this because you're not white.
09:05Like I didn't have...
09:06I had that experience in high school,
09:07but I didn't have that experience in the professional world
09:09when there was zero opportunity.
09:13As we have become more...
09:15As we've become more careful,
09:17we've sometimes lessened our opportunities
09:19to remember that we are not defined by our race.
09:22And especially in voice acting,
09:24you are not defined by anything that this package
09:26that you are in has to offer.
09:29But if you want...
09:29If you want there to be more roles out there,
09:32then yeah, we have to create them.
09:34But if...
09:34Because that's the only way they're going to get created.
09:37But if you're excited to use your voice
09:39for anything in the world as an actor,
09:42you know, as an excited actor would,
09:43then go for it.
09:44Be that chair.
09:46Go.
