hello welcome to the army been up close and personal on you hosting us here to take you through this musical dance we call life and to do that you know i bring on talented individuals the best in the business to help us make it through to day's guess is a producer direct just phenomenal been in the industry twenty three years he's done production for animation and that's his thing the king of the hill the simpsons and so many of the other top rated series and  well i basically left atlanta and always wanted to live in california who me so i basically made some phone calls networked they got me into a company called from rome in really just by going in for an interview i remember boss saying she saw me in a blue suit and knew that i was from the east coast and i was about business and it just all went from there it was just like i started working on production who for you know simpsons and king and hill and then i branched off from there and started doing casting because i got bored and they did something else to stimulate me because i just didn't want to just going to work with animation directors and animation so it was like ok i think it's time to just move to the next step so then i fell into animation and casting and stuff like that so i got to learn how to really listen and watch was directors direct actors and i got to know the actors really well and really tap in the get to really know them split between new york and l a back then because i figured you know i work behind the scenes in t v you know i was more or less my passion and stuff so that's how i figured out in quark that i want to work in television i was sitting in a dorm watching television shows really and that's when i was like ok this is what i want to major in so when you went there you didn't know what you were going to make every sacred year i did and then when i had an epiphany that it was starting to ok let me start taking classes and most of the classes back then they were like television production  production and film production and so it was nothing you know in front of the camera you know but then i realized i was like no there were people who were taking classes to be in front of a camera and i was like that is just too much work it was  no i'm not really going to something else oh my goodness all right so how long did it take working in the field of voice over before you got the opportunity to do this because i mean isn't that high like you know only if you really know do you know i didn't work when they were on didn't work with stars it's all voice over actors ok so the voice of actors because if we got the big stars then we would have to pay them huge amount of money to do the actual series plus they didn't have time because they were all working on movie projects so what we did was we cast maybe the sound alikes to say who could probably as close to would would sound and act in get his emotions and personality that's what we did back then jackie chan did come and appeared for his show did you get work done with him then there was a problem there was a problem that you know with the dialect yeah so we had to substitute for an actor who kind of sat you know sound like him so always i fell into it wasn't like my first love but being having a background in animation helped me a lot as far as working with the actors and then being around them and it was just quite natural for me to direct actors from the voice when i worked in at a talent agency who just became really natural of just hearing how they would act in and how they tap into the characters and getting the personality of the characters in the emotions and so it's just a natural thing for me i can't really say this is what i wanted to do but i was like i'm ok i'm grateful that i got the necessary training from being on several shows and working with all the production team to help me develop ear that i didn't know i had  so well in the industry you have a good reputation for having a really good ear when i do i mean brag about it but i do it well because i know because i bring the best here on the show because i want to help those who want to do this and i want people to know that voiceover it's wonderful and it's glamorous it looks wonderful glamorous but there's a lot that goes into it flow but let's not different i mean it's a lot of work i basically can once i hear where you from i basically you know tell totally you know tell you now you need more training you do because you're not you well you don't know until like maybe you go to conferences or maybe you go to workshops as to what level you are you have to disc aim the voiceover to hear some sort of a sample of what you can do i technically will go no that's not your niche and i have told actors that your commercial days is kind of over maybe you need to go and you need to narration you know because it's a different it's a different year to it you know you might you know you're competing against so many people in this john maybe you better off doing this and i said actors you should perfect that area first that you really love and then temper off to something else because everybody tries to do so many so many i want to on this question so thank you for going there yeah you know so so now you teach and direct others are you voice actor yourself no i thought you were now i am not an actor so everybody yes i do not an actor at all because i was going to say how do you take direction you know i i you know i listen but i you know i think the thing is because you know being in the public eye i like to have my personality shine a little bit and come out of my shell here being in front of cameras i'm like oh my god there are no no no a lot of them but not this  and they the agents will give a copy to the actor and then the actor will come see me and so i am supposed to get the best performance out of an actor once they're it's almost like an audition you know it's just that we as a talent agent we from the talent agency we go ahead and we get to decide whether or not we're going to see your decision or not alone based on your acting ability to fill your performance of the actual script so that's what i did all day i listen to tons and tons of auditions and sometimes i get to choose which edition was great sometimes i would you know call actors and say we're all dishing i got to have that kind of power of supposed to be here ten minutes ago because you have to remember it's a fast moving industry so whoever sometimes first come first serve whatever talent agency since then chances are they might book you first or at least in animation they usually wait for all the different agencies to submit their audition you know but it's also two of sometimes top five so an agent will put down twelve names and we can only and so for me it was like oh ok and sometimes i had good days sometimes actors came in they had bad days and they usually when they came in and had bad days they booked really because they were they didn't think you know what you're right as they're reading it for the client or you know i'm going over it before they go in there and they're supposed to come prepared so the actors get the copy the night before or an animation and we two or three days then they would just come in and read the copy in front of me and then i get to this i listen and i'll say ok maybe you need to give me a little bit more energy here maybe you tapering off or you haven't connected a copy so everybody would come to really see me because i was one of those  slow and i would really like stretched my guy would have actors in their sweat in the booth because they were like oh my god a combat i would have never even made those decisions and i'm more like an image person so i would go ahead and i would give images to actors and they would go oh oh with you would like not play it like i put on my game face so when i was you know joking and laughing i was like oh no now this is a business i really want to get the know so at least i got that nomination and stuff like that so and i also proved to myself that i could actually do it and direct you know demos and stuff like that and really get actors to move move stop thinking about it you know stretched into i didn't know that i could you know sound do that like a and entertainment yes and i was there on saturday i didn't go to the sunday thing but they had the actors all the voice actors and work with million dollar voices and then they were coached and one on stage that didn't do that every year  the voice over towards is done every year between they do it they switch between l a and new york joan and rudy who founded the organization who they go ahead and they find top professionals and they basically just have the actors connect with producers and casting people just so that it's more like a met working thing it's a big network but also a training ground and it's great also to you know if you really want to get you know your voice overs just not from you know it's sort of different points of view on the producing side from the cast and star from the agency side so now how hard is it to direct people and have you ever found anybody that was under rectal it's not hard it's about for me my directing is different because i need to get to know the how do you get to know them i sometimes go to the homes freely i hang out with actors all the time bowling any crazy event you know everybody is really hands on really i like to just go i had hang with actors even though i'm lying yeah but you got it you got to do that you know you got the job but you got to know when you supposed to be strong so when i met with them i pay attention to what they say and what's interesting is  that when they go in and they work with me they can hear they didn't realize what the conversation was but i retain all the information and i use what they have said when it comes to directing so that's what i had to find their thing is totally totally different so good and i think that's really good because some other people that don't work like that it seems superficial right you know it seems like they're just coaching you because there's a dollar attached to it right you know a lot of people don't like that they want to feel that you care about them even if it is your business you know you can care about people and still be about business right absolutely and i think the thing is this too like i say when i connect and i was just going to one of my clients i wall as my agent my former agents would say i would never let an actor out of the booth if the audition was bad they actors new lie ever will do whatever he can to get the best performance out it might not be suitable send the ball because of the fact that we got to do the top five but at least they knew when they left the booth that addition was the rest they could write and i was like yeah that's great because you have time limits when you audition and you can be in there for like thirty five forty minutes which everybody likes to do because they want to make sure would probably go about maybe seventy five that's a good ratio and you're in california so how do you deal with people all across the country well more substance that i was you know i do what everybody drew skype in a zoom i do i basically travel so that was and i tend certain conferences voice over conferences so that's how people get to really know me people contact me through twitter and they try to contact me do facebook so but like i said i basically market myself  do and also people do a lot of you know from still they they say oh i've heard good things about you yes a friend that i have also been stopped at the airport really give me three tips if someone wanted to be a booth director give me three tips really have a sense of working well with the actor as a team because it's really a team effort and they need to be able to listen listen really well to get that performance out of the unions and so wants to listen into what the actor brings to  second and then they need to take a voiceover class they have and can scan station with me i'll have a consultation with them and i will say the exact same thing in that order right don't do an improv class first and into a voiceover do it in his order so do you work with people like for certain amount of time or do you just do one or two consultation not just when they have an audition i work with everybody and consultations i you know people come to me because there are some people come to me a brand new into the voiceover industry some people come to me when they're not sure what's going on with their careers so i deal with everybody on all different levels you know whether i dish in the privates brother you know like i said consultations you know all right so every tell us how we can reach you