Mastering Gaming and Animation Voice Acting with Shelly Shenoy

Participant #1:
When I see auditions like this in the market, where I go, oh, this was clearly written for a man, think again. I always audition. Always. Always.

Participant #1:
Well, welcome, everybody, to today's episode of Mission Audition. Thank you so much for joining us. So Mission Audition is the Voiceover podcast, where we listen to real auditions from Voices.com members and we get to hear feedback from world class voiceover coaches like Shelley here today. My name is Evan Weeb, senior account manager here. And I'm joined by my amazing cohost, Vanessa Buchi, community manager here at Voices. So today's topic is on the invaluable tips for the animation industry. Before we get to the auditions, let me introduce you to our amazing guest, Shelley Shinnoi. Shelley is a well known voice actor famous for her work on the biggest video games in the world. Shelley is also a voice director for Netflix as well as the BBC, and she was voted number one voiceover coach in the country by the Sovis Awards. Welcome, Shelley. Hi. Thanks so much for having me, guys. It's so great to see you. I know. It's so good to see you too. On this podcast where we're pretending to just hear each other, the Zoom podcast. I showered for everyone, I hope. Oh, my goodness, we can hear it. Thank you so much. Thank you. So take us through a little bit of the topic here today on some of the insights you have for the animation industry and new people looking to get into that. Yeah. So, as everybody knows, there are animation auditions on Voices.com. I've had students book roles on Voices for Warner Brothers, for Harry Potter, for all kinds of really fantastic things. The very first job that I booked on Voices was for a video game. It happened right away. I had just started auditioning. I was never a Voices member until this year, and I did that to make my students training programs more involved and intricate and in depth, because I was like, what else can I do? Let me pay the money and join Voices myself and see if I'm coaching people properly. Cool. How to do this? And I dove in and started booking right away, and I was like, oh, and also, I'll make some extra money. Great. Sure. So one of the first ones that I booked, the first job that I booked was a video game, and they happened there. And so I've since booked a dozen commercial gigs. The voiceover industry rests on three pillars, and it's really important that you realize this if you're getting involved in the voiceover industry for one particular portion of the industry. All right, so these three pillars are the world of commercial, which is the art of the sale. Then you have the world of narration, which is long form, unbiased stamina, reading. And then you have animation, which is the art of character design and performance. Right. There are a million technical abilities that go into this like you must know how to record yourself. You've got to be on top of your tech equipment and you've got to dive in as an actor first. And so there's a whole bunch of elements to the to the animation world, but subsequently hundreds of thousands of jobs happen in the voiceover industry every single day that borrow from these three pillars. So you might be doing a commercial job that is a little bit charactery, or you might be doing a narration gig that has a few character. You want to have clean character splits while having an unbiased narration, a neutral read. And then you have all kinds of animation auditions and performances and things that are happening in the world. So animation is by far the most intricate and so I really wanted to touch on this world to give people some exposure to what's happening out there in the actual animation world and how the auditions are run and everything. Love it. Okay, perfect. That's great. So we'll get into the job description and we'll dive into auditions after. Okay, great. Well, that was some pretty incredible insight on the state of the industry. I'm excited to get into something that is, you know, something I don't understand as much. So here's the brief for the job. So this is going to be a serio comedic role. Looked up that word yesterday and it means apparently. Really? I had to yeah. Learn every day. Apparently we're looking at comedy with serious elements or overtones. So I don't know if I got that right, but same as dark comedy or I don't know, the street terminology would simply be that if the stakes are high enough and it's played as dramatically as it needs to be, therefore it is funny. Alright. Okay. I love that stereo comedic means you got to go all the way with the drama, knowing and understanding as a performer. This is for a funny piece. And so if the stakes are high enough, it will naturally be hilarious. So we're going to be listening for those high stakes. This is an action adventure video game. As you said, the actor must portray sharp comedic skills through the honesty and realness of the performance. This is a lieutenant, an army lieutenant in their mid late 40s can be male or female. As long as they sound like a lieutenant, gender identity doesn't matter. For this job, this lieutenant is in charge. Keeping that in mind. So regardless of what Peters does, a different character here that the character is addressing, everything in this scene is extremely serious, as you said. As we realize, the battle may not be so much against the aliens as it is against Peters, who is the squad fool, apparently. Okay. Wow. Yeah. And authoritative and bold. Authoritative, bold. Realizing the threat isn't the aliens, it's Peters, the squad idiot. There's a misnomer out there in the world of voice acting, which is simply that voice reading is enough. And so we're really looking for all of the different vocal elements of the voice acting and the way that I wrote this piece. Fun fact, I initially wrote this for a woman, okay? Not a single woman auditioned for this James audition. Isn't that fascinating? We got a number of guys in here. We got a lot of great clear picks of guys that are like, oh, well, I'm this age range and can sound commanding. Not one single woman audition for this. And man, let me tell you, when I see auditions like this in the market where I go, oh, this was clearly written for a man, think again. I always audition. Always. Always. Because what's the worst that can happen? Exactly. You clearly stand out and are being given generous amounts of attention as one of the only, if not the only woman to audition. And so for the people out there, I wrote this for a woman who was 55 and slaughtered this read. She was hysterical in it. Amazing. I want to hear that audition herself. You're hearing it. Well, with that, let's dive into the first read here. We got well, I'll be damned. If it's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. Alright, boys, strap on. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon. Peters. One of you get down. All of you. No. Turn that thing off. Peters. What are you trying to do? Get us all killed?

Participant #1:
Oh, no. Peters.

Participant #1:
You shot me, you donkey. No, no. You set yourself down. I'm going to handle this myself. All right? So first of all, I just want to say something that's very interesting because I've never heard an audition like that in my life, but that's cool. What are your thoughts? That's fascinating here. Okay, so in the world of voiceover auditions, what will happen is they will have sound effects riddled throughout the script. What these sound effects are for is to inform the actor of exactly what's happening in the scene. Anytime you see sound effects for any audition ever, it's just to inform the actor as to what the post performance will sound like in postproduction. So there are sound effects here listed. When he says quadrant 760, we're making one of the bellground eyes on the horizon that you hear that it's into a walkietalkie. That's an opportunity for you to give a walkietalkie voice, not a different voice, but like a knowing that this is going to be post in a walkie talkie. So how are you going to broaden that read to make sure that it translates well into sounding like it's coming through a walkietalkie? Then if there's where the sound effects are, if it simply says vo, like a vo sound effect, that's you, that's what you do. So it says Vo gasp like Peter's, one of you. And then you hear the sound effects of an alien screech. What happened here in this performance was this actor decided to perform the sound effects that would later be put in post in his vocal audition. Right. And then when he came back and was continuing to perform, he kept including random sound effects that weren't necessarily in there. So you hear that there's aliens in the background. Peter shoots a laser off. It attracts the alien. You hear the alien screech and you are just vocally reacting to all the things you're reading in the script. Right. And you only add a vocal element if it says vo, not if it's just sound effects. You don't do anything that's vital information. I mean, for anyone doing animation auditions until you know that I can see why someone would see that and actually just vocalize everything they see. But that makes complete sense. Yeah. Right. And then what happens is that your listener becomes confused. Because if you think about it, really this is what I say when I'm training in animation. It always comes down to discipline and common sense. You might know one or two tricks and you might love to use them, but if you don't have discipline, you might sound a little crazy. We'll get into this in a later audition. Right? Right. And then there's a common sense if you're like, I'm here as the general and I'm reading something. But then also, I'm the alien. Your listener is like, Wait, are you moving? What are you doing? Right. You'll never be asked to add in the own vocal the vocal elements of your surroundings. You're simply to react to those surroundings. Okay. Okay. So what would be, I guess, your final tip for this audition just to improve on? Well, this one, I think great. Perfect voice. Perfect voice for a lieutenant. I think that if he had a little bit more experience in the world of animation if he would have known that it would have been a real contender. But I think that because he didn't know that it reads as amateur. Right. And confusing for the listener. Fair enough. Yeah, I'd say for that one. The only other thing for audio quality that I mentioned and we always have to emphasize the audio quality for voices specifically because we just find it's very competitive that way. We do find sometimes with these louder performances, like animation, that's when if there are any errors in the room's acoustics, that's when it starts to resonate on the louder words. So I think if you listen back, there's a touch of that in this audition. But overall, sounds like a treated room. Of course. Okay, well, thanks so much for sharing your input. Let's go to audition number two. Takes. Well, I'll be damned. If that's not all friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. All right, boys, strap up. We gotta move. Quarter 760, we'll make our way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon, Peters. All of you deck down, all of you. Now turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do? Get us all killed?

Participant #1:
Well, I'll be damned. If that's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. Alright, boys, strap up. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making way to the battleground as on the horizon. Peters. One of you get down. All of you. Now. Turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do? Get us all killed? Oh, no. All right. Okay, so go for it. A couple things here. He did two takes and he didn't switch up either. Take? If you are going to give two takes, you have to make absolutely clear decisions in your choices, in your stakes, in how you react to certain things. The two takes were virtually identical. Now, when we're talking about the world of animation, I will say this guy has a phenomenal character voice. However, he used the wrong character voice for the wrong platform. Right? This is a video game. This is a highstakes militant video game. And he gave me Saturday morning cartoons. Bad guy. Okay, so every animation read has an emotive output behind it. An emotive output. He picked the wrong emotion to emote. He went full on bad guy. Okay? Then when we're talking about tricks, he's got a beautiful fun trick up his sleeve. It's that giggle. And he used it from start to finish in both reads. What do we have here? And it's like, well, okay. But then he didn't stop discipline. Discipline. Discipline. He didn't stop giggling for the entire so he's laughing all the way through. Are you paying it? You're being electrocuted. You have to show fear. What are you laughing at right now? It's a great trick. It's a great walla. Wallas are nonverbal sound effects. It's a great little ticker element to have in a character you create. But if you don't show discipline in what you're doing, then it overtakes the piece. Great voice, but he portrayed the wrong emotion. He sounded like the bad guy. He's not the bad guy. This is our hero. We're rooting for this guy. Right. So if you choose simply the wrong emotive output, the whole thing is sort of in a different playing field. Does that make sense? Yeah. Is this something that you have to work with students on, where they absolutely. What's your method for switching the emote if you're going down the wrong rabbit hole? Well, this is the common sense element. What is the situation giving you? So in every single animation audition they give you okay, so you are presented with something that I call givens. The givens are the name of the character, possibly a photograph, possibly a description, possibly a bio, possibly an emotive output. Outlier. Right? Outlier what you are not given. So these are called the givens. The only given that you're guaranteed 99% of the time is just the line itself. Let's face it, a lot of animation auditions can be highly confidential. I audition for things all the time and I'm like, I'm pretty sure that was for Rockstar, but their stuff is so under wrapped, they even disguised the company name. But I can recognize the writing because I know the writers. Right. And so there's different elements like that. But you are given your givens. I have a list of 25 different givens that if you are not given these givens, you can create them. Okay. And this is your emotive output. The personality, how old this character is, their health status, their emotive status, all these different elements that create rich, amazing characters from scratch. Right? Right. And so I train people on the givens that they do have full throttle in being able to create, but everything underlies with discipline and common sense. And so what part of this performer decided to make most of these guys this guy's lines that he was chuckling at, it like, there we go immediately. Sounds like an erasca TESCAN bad guy with two pistols in it and a whip. Wait, what? We're in the military, man. You are in the trenches. Right. I have a question, too, just because just for people that do two takes, is that necessary? Do people even like, when you're listening, do you even listen to the second one? There is a hard rule for the entire voiceover industry, whether this is animation, narration, or commercial, right. Ideally, this sticks to commercial and then usually plays into animation very, very well. If your audition is six to 15 seconds, do it three times, right? Okay. Do it four times. Like 6 seconds, do it four or five times, right. If it's 30 seconds, do it twice. If it's 45 seconds to a minute, do it once. If you ever, ever do it more than one time, you must give them something different to listen to. 99% of voice actors will just repeat what they did and they think they made a choice, and they might have a different vocal timber, but then it always by the end of the second read through you're in the same habits that you're doing, same performance. Voiceover talent will add the second take just because the idea of that makes them feel more employable, maybe, but you're not giving the listener something to listen to. Therefore, you're wasting their time. Therefore, time is money, and you've wasted their money. Right. If you don't give them something different to listen to, don't give them anything. That's so fair. There's another element that I want to bring up here that a few people did that submitted. Why on earth did this guy choose to leave off the last quarter of the audition? The last three lines are missing in both reads. Right. That might be a little bit of a platform thing, I do know, but I'm going to bust that myth right now. Okay. Yeah. I want to hear it okay. When Voiceover clients present jobs to Voices and they receive all the auditions, they are enabled to download those auditions. You are only able to keep the files of the person you officially hire. Now listen, I've been doing this for a long time and I have had my work stolen. I've had my work stolen. I've heard improvisations. I did in an audition on the national radio. So, yes, things do get stolen out there. They do? Yeah, they do. But it happens so infrequently on a site like Voices, especially when the client isn't even permitted to download any of the auditions, if they want to just feel your voice and have to put a recording device up to their computer and then what are they going to do? Put that on the radio? I don't think so. Yeah, well, thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, that's great to know. Yeah. And so you know what's crazy is that it really hurt his audition. It was incomplete. I didn't hear what the choice would have been. So if you're auditioning permission, audition out there, read the whole thing. It's all there for you. Yeah, listen, if a client is having you auditioned for something that's well over 60 seconds, you don't have to read the whole thing. 60 seconds. Notice that if I said it's 15 seconds or less, do it three or four times. That's about a minute. If it's 30 seconds, do it twice. That's about a minute. If it's 45 to a minute, do it once. Unless you absolutely have something different to bring to the table for take too. But any client I've been on so many castings, they don't need more than 60 seconds of your voice to make a decision. Right? All right, let's get into audition number three. Well, I'll be down. If that's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. All right, boys, strap up. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making our way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon. Peters, one of you get down. All of you. Now. Turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do, get us all killed? No, Peters,

Participant #1:
you shot me, your donkey. No, no. Sit yourself down. I'm going to handle this myself. Well, I'll be damned. If that's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. Alright, boys, strap up. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making our way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon. Peters. One of you get down. All of you. Now turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do? Get us all killed? Nah. Oh, no, Peters. You shot me, you donkey. No, no, you sit yourself down. I'm going to handle this myself. Yeah, so this guy. What a delight. First of all, what a delight. The missing element here. You guys all know what the secret to comedy is, right? Go on, enlighten us. It's timing. Okay, so you notice that the gaffed out, you know, so it was so spaced out that he missed the beat, right? You missed the punchline, you missed the beat. You missed the rhythm of the scene. Right? Like I said earlier, it's not voice reading, it's voice acting. And so, therefore, the misnomer, like I said, is that it's voice reading and not voice acting is not true. You've got to understand and know your beats, your objective, your pacing, what the stakes are, and above all else, be honest and truthful. Now, there were so many good elements to this guy's voice and his performance, but because of the way that he spaced it out, he missed the joke or jokes. Right? It was just hanging in there. I was waiting for it. I wrote down, I would have loved to have heard really different choices in take two, but take two has a slightly different vocal. Timber. There were a few other choices, but, for example, there's a line, you shot me, you donkey. Right? Right. In the original script, it's bleeping idiot. But we put donkey for us, a lot more fun to say e for everyone, right? A lot more fun to say the first version, but you shot me. A donkey could be really, really funny and emphasis in any certain word. Like, my favorite game is how dare you, sir? Where you choose one word to emphasize each time you say, how dare you, sir? And you just go back and forth between two people. How dare you, sir? Right? How dare you, sir? How dare you, sir? The emphasis really, really matters. And I got, you shot me, you donkey. Both times. I would have loved to have heard this guy really hit the joke with, like,

Participant #1:
donkey. And then the recovery. I mean, there's so many, like, you know, we'll get into a lot of these vocal performances and just a lot of opportunities missed. Nobody got electrocuted, not really. I mean, there's one hint of electrocution. You'll see it coming up, but, man, so many mis comedic opportunities here. Yeah. So for this audition, what do you think is the next level for this talent? Like, is it just more time and intention with the script? Is it the homework, the prep? The next level? This audition? I think this actor in this audition,

Participant #1:
I feel like hearing how much potential he has, I feel like we got 80% of it in this audition. So this is like, a solid b. But I believe that if this guy I have no idea who this guy is. I believe that if he spent a little bit more time and really went for it, I mean, there's so much work just waiting for him. Right? But you got to raise the stakes. You got to go for it. You got to have that pacing, that timing, that rhythm, just all that. We definitely find that as a trend where self direction starts to separate out people who are the top 5% auditions and then all of the folks who are maybe reaching 80% at home, because it's not really a reflection of them. It's a reflection of at home auditioning. If you're not used to pushing yourself that much, that's something we do here across the board. I'd say animation or commercial, it's just people who are able to get to that 95, 99% with self direction. It could be huge. Yeah. And a lot of that is experience, you know, and time around the bend. You know, I coach auditions seven days a week. Seven days a week, I coach auditions. You're a hustler. It's ridiculous. But this is what I do. Because the audition element is the most important part of your career. There's no such thing as a full time voice actor. You're a full time auditioner. So true. Right. That's just what it is. And like, man, you got to get your auditions up to speed because the audition is the gig. I can't tell you how many jobs I've booked because people just mailed me money like, oh, no, no, we just kept your audition. It's perfect. The audition is the gig. The audition that's gonna highlight that in the court of the day episode. True. So true. Alright, Shelley, next audition, we're gonna go for it. Well, I'll be damned. If that's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. All right, boy, strap up. We got to move. Quadrant 760, we're making our way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon, Peters. One of you get down. All of you. Now. Turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do, get us all killed?

Participant #1:
No, Peters.

Participant #1:
You shot me, you donkey. No, no, you sit yourself down. I'm going to handle this myself. Go ahead. So for someone that I'm not really an expertise in the voiceover world, but I think this is pretty good. What do you think? It's the funniest audition out of everything. Well, so let me tell you why. First of all, you guys have heard all these other auditions and you were giggling the entire time. Why were you giggling? Because the stakes are so high. Because vocally, he hit every level of all right, boys, we got to move. What is it? It's those aren't some of our ugly friends. We're in their ugly head. And then all right, boys, we got to move. That's a different level. And then quadrant 760, we're making our weight. You're talking to a different element. That's a different level. And then, Peters, there's a little bit of flexibility there. There's so much honesty. Pacing was good here too, right? Pacing is there. The stakes are so high. The reactions are so real. You can hear Audibly. He is clearly being electrocuted, which is and he plays it so seriously. Who's like he's like, no, no, you set yourself down, Peters. Like, he's recovering, right? There's a vocal recovery there. There were so many auditions where people were like, you know, like, barely getting electrocuted, and then they're like, no, sit yourself down, Pitters. I'm going to handle this. Right? Yeah. His transition was very smooth. There were six or so different vocal elements that went into the read. It was totally fluid from beat to beat. So the pacing was on point, and the stakes were as high as they could be. So you've got real drama, real comedy, ladies and gentlemen, serial comedic. Wow. Pacing on point. If we're giggling, it's working. You've heard dozens of these reads, right? And then this one out of the blue, it's like, there it is. And then you're laughing from start to finish. You also wrote a very difficult script. I will say, like, this is not the easiest script to just jump in. So all of these auditions are impressive to it's a great yeah, this is pretty standard and on point for voice over auditions for animation on the Daily, right? So, like, earlier this morning, I was playing a six foot grasshopper in a war. So you have to be like, doing and then there's like this odd, weird language where you're like, hang du zada WA DA bay. You're like, what the hell? What is happening? So you've got to do that. And then like I said, there was a gig that I just booked recently. It was a Halloween spot. For realtor.com. This is a national commercials. This is one of the union gigs. And this was for commercial, right? But you borrow from animation, you create a character, and the audition was somebody's knocking on the door, and then you hear a door open. These are all sound effects you don't do, right? And then you just say, oh, hi, we're your new neighbors, and we brought you some lemon meringue bars or whatever. And then you're calling in when the door opens, you see a ghost and you scream and run away, right? And the realtor.com commercial is if you don't have someone showing you what's really going on in the neighborhood, you want to buy in, you might end up with a problem like this, right? You move in next door to a haunted house, right? When I did that audition, pulling in for all the animation elements was creating this character. I did one that was deeply Southern and one that was like New York City savvy. And I was like, hey, there just your new neighbors moving in. Oh, boy, we got some great lemon meringue pot. There wasn't, like, a reading of the script, like, hello, we're your new neighbors. You have to speak like you're really tapping in. And then the door opens, and it was basically like, we just wanted to let you know that we just moved in and oh, my God, that's literally yes. I was like, are we going to get the scream? Yes. And you just go for it. Sorry, Jeff. People love. This episode, I'm laughing. I'm here for sure. And I ended up running away. I found that I booked the job right. When they got on the line, they were already laughing because they just started relisting to my audition again, and they were like, we got over 100 auditions and this one had no competition. And it's because what do you do? You play the honest truth. I'm sorry, but if a ghost, it's the emotional aspect of a truth. Oh, yeah. And what I did was it was just she screams and run away. Right. That runs away. That's what it says in the script. And I was like, we just wanted you to know we're here if you ever need a cup of sugar. And then you hear the door open, and it was it was the whole shock. Right? Yeah. On my third take, I improv and just continually screamed as she ran away. And they were howling and they were laughing, and it was all because it was honest. That's it. That's it. That's it. Honesty is key. Honesty is what I've learned. Hilarious. Yes, hilarious it is. All right, Shelley, next audition, let's get into it. Well, I'll be them if that's not our friends, rearing their ugly heads. And I'm not a lieutenant. All right, boys, strap up. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon. Peters. One of you, get down. All of you. Now. Turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do, get us all killed? Oh, no, peters shot me. You don't see no, no, you set yourself down. I'm gonna handle this myself. Yeah, take the lead. All right, so this guy perfect vocal quality, perfect vocal drama, perfect age range, demographic. You can hear the power in its voice instantly. Love this voice. Right? The reason why this wouldn't make it to the top tier of, like, hey, you booked this, or whatever, is because he rushed it. And that's it. That is it. Timing is everything. Pacing is everything. It was like he dipped a toe in to be like, I'm the perfect voice for this. But then he backed all the way off and didn't fully throttle, like, fully go into he had a good ten more seconds to add to this, of getting electrocuted of those moments in between playing the high stakes. It was rushed, it was out. I mean, he had somewhere better to be. So he didn't book this job, but he was and this is a painful thing, otherwise perfect the exact voice you're looking for with the power and the drama, but no comedy. So for anyone that you're working with who maybe doesn't feel comfortable ad libbing, how do you get into that space where for animation, you actually do have that freedom? You do, but you also don't. Right. Okay, so the thumbnail rule for animation and improv is you never improv on the first take ever. You can improv what you like on the second take, if you feel you have something incredible to add, people will sometimes take the steering wheel and drive it way off into left field to another ballpark for no reason at all. That's the discipline and common sense element. Like, are you adding to this or are you taking away from this and making it a whole different thing? I see. So the improv really, honestly should come from a place of honesty. So like, for example, if any one of these actors said anything besides Donkey, I would have been delighted to call him a different insult or name. Right. If they felt it in that moment, they didn't feel like saying Donkey, I would have loved to have heard what they brought to the table. Right. The reaction or the recovery from being electrocuted. There's room in there for the Wallace and for the response for the vocal recovery time of like god damn. Damn you, Peter. You know, like whatever you want. If you want to throw a little jab at them or something. If there's something that is very honest and happening in the moment and you put it in there and it works, it's gold. But it has to come from a place of the acting element of you reacting, not just putting things out there because you think you can. So what would be like your key takeaway for this audition is I would love to see somebody like this who's got all this gorgeous, rich power and authority in the voice, not be afraid to get into the comedy. Right. And I feel like what's really funny is that I actually really liked the last line where I was like, I'm going to handle this myself. He sounds like a dad, like a perturbed dad. Like talking to his teenage son or something. Get away from the car, you fool, or whatever. You feel this like almost like a little hoodie stubborn kind of thing. And it's cute and it's actually really funny and it shows me. I know he's got a sense of humor. He threw a tiny element of like of barely getting election. I know it's in there. The wallets have all been different across the board. They really do differentiate the auditions to me anyway. None of them sounded the same so far. Yeah, of course they should all be different. Right. Because your voice is your vocal thumbprint. Right. They should all be different. And the way you get electrocuted isn't the way that I get electrocuted differently. Alright, so I would like to see this guy really take his potential and flex it and really go for it. Amazing. Thank you so much, Shelley. Okay, we're going to get into the next audition here. Well, I'll be damned. If that's not our friend rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. Alright boys, strap up. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making way to the battleground eyes. On horizon. Peters. One of you, get down. All of you. No. Turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do? Get us all killed? Ah. No. Peters. You shot me, you donkey. No, no, you set yourself down. I'm going to handle this myself. Two things, the emotive output and something that you would want an actor to be totally insightfully in control of. And that is there was a typo in the copy on purpose. I missed it. Right. Really? Yeah. Eyes on on the horizon. Right? It's eyes on the horizon. Right? And 80% of the actors said eyes on, you know. All right, boys, we gotta move. Eyes on the horizon, right? Right. 20% of the auditioners said eyes on on the horizon, which makes really no sense at all. Yeah, right. So, again, discipline, common sense. Right? That's clearly a typo. And the majority of guys saw that it was a typo and read it correctly. And this one made it very clear. Eyes on the horizon, which doesn't make any sense. So you're kind of like, what then? Emotive output. Right? So for some reason, this actor chose cheerful. We didn't get serious. We didn't get the serious enough to make us laugh. That's not our friends rear in their ugly heads. And I'm no, Lieutenant. OK, boys, let's go. Wait, what? Right, where's your drama? You could very well be killed in the next few minutes. Right? Yeah, that's what I was getting, the serial comedic, right? You're in charge of your crew's lives and you are telling them it's go time and you're like, all right, any one of you could die any minute. Let's do this. Wait, what? Yeah, well, it's just the wrong emotive output, right? Choosing joy or that cheery, that sweetness isn't going to work in a spot like this. Not in a military spot. Oh, yeah. Alright, let's get to the next audition here. Yeah. Well, I'll be damned. If that's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. All right, boys, strap up. We got a move. Quadrant seven, 60, we're making way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon. Oh, Peters, what if you get down, all of you. Now turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do? Get us all killed? OK, I feel like this was very stagnant, in my opinion. What do you think, Shelley? So this is what I'm talking about, voice reading as opposed to voice acting. Right? So this person chose to read for the voice of the commander in the trenches in the war zone in a deadly situation, not as the commander in the trenches in a war zone in a deadly situation. So he's reading for somebody that is getting electrocuted, not as someone that's getting electrocuted. So there are no elements to the audition. It is one flat line of where you've got so many vocal opportunities, like, strap up, boys, we got to move. Peters, one of you. Get down. Get down, all of you. There's so many different ups and downs and opportunities to take, let alone like when getting electrocuted. Now I'm electrocuted. When you're just reading it as like, oh, boy, here we go. One voice, one way, the whole way through, that's never going to work. Because if I took that actual human man and put him in the he wouldn't sound like that. Yeah, exactly. But in his mind, this was how he chose to do it, which is non reactive, which is simply just reading. Yeah, it's a unique read, too. Right. So like you said, going ups and downs with it and just having that emotional tie when you're saying each line, this one definitely feels a lot more linear. Well, yeah, and he was not the most linear person that read. There was another reader that literally just, okay, boys, we have to move eyes on the horizon. There's some ugly criminals, and they're looking at us, and we better get them. Oh, I'm being electrocuted right now. Oh, no. Oh, Peters, what did you do? Oh, no. Sit down. I'm going to handle this. Somebody read the entire thing like that. This one, he made a choice. Here we are talking kind of secretively in one way for the entire he made a choice. But sounding like a guy telling a secret in the bushes, standing outside somebody's kitchen window and peering in is not the choice we want to make for an army general in the trenches. And as a listener, too, right. Creeping. Right. As a listener, I didn't really feel any emotional connection to that one. Well, I always say the entire voiceover industry is a feeling industry, not a hearing industry. That's just period, bottom line. So when somebody books something, it's because you made the listener feel something. It's because you felt it as you read it. It's an entire feeling industry. There's no, like, just hearing like, oh, he was good. You know, they're good because you feel that they're good. And especially with acting, especially if you're not feeling it. Right. So, I mean, you know, you've got to be screaming and crying and running and panting and getting shot or stabbed or eaten by zombies. Like, hello, my entire year working on The Walking Dead, which you're attacking zombies. You're getting attacked by zombies. Little known fun fact. I was all the zombies, all of them. So I have a loop group, and I actually brought in I conformed a loop group, and I voice directed and voiced all of the entire video game. So it's me being like, run as Kate, we got to go. And then there's me behind me being like, I'm going to go buy that game just to play it. There's so many good sound bites for the very intro. Like, you're just dropping all of these amazing performances right here, right now. Animation and wisdom. Animation. We got to do it. Okay, all right, we got one more. The grand finale here. Let's get into it. Well, I'll be damned. If that's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. All right, boys, strap up. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon. Peters, what have you get down, all of you. Now. Turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do, get us all killed? Oh, God, no. Peters. Oh, you shot me, you donkey. No, no. You set yourself down. I'm gonna handle this myself. Yeah. So here's the element here of the perfect voice for the role. And why didn't he get the job? Because he did not play the comedy at all. He played pure drama. This is a serial comedic spot. Obviously, your real battle is against the squad moron who's accidentally wearing the wrong glasses and shooting off lasers and attracting all the aliens over to you, and you've got to get him in line, and he accidentally laser zaps you and electrocutes you. It's a very comedic situation. And the drama is all there with this guy. And he had the most beautifully delicious voice. Nom, nom, nom. Love it, love it. No comedy right out. Just kicked right out. Just byebye. Right? But the potential is there for you. You have all the potential in the world because you already booked the gig with your voice alone, but your performance was actually what removed you from the role because you didn't bring to the table. The one most important element is understanding that this is a funny piece, right. And how delicious and instantly he would have been booked. If I heard this guy who's this age demographic, who can play those dramatic roles so intensely. If I heard him go shop me, you freaking idiot, or whatever, I would have been howling. I would have been on the floor if he had gone for it vocally and he backed away from it entirely. And so the reason why he's one of the contenders in this is because I want to show people, like, look, you might have the perfect voice for the audition for the role, but if your audition doesn't bring to the table all of those elements, that would book you the spot. If your audition isn't magic, you're not going to book it even with the most perfect voice. And that's the thing, too, I find, is, like, some voice actors, they're just afraid to take the leap. Why are they so afraid to just go for it? You know what's really interesting is there's a show on HBO, it's called Succession. Have you heard of it? Yes. Have you seen it? No. It's on the list. Okay. It's one of the darkest, funniest shows I've ever seen. I just finished an animation intensive with one of the cast members of success. Sure. And so here we have a highly skilled actor, a very dramatic, highly comedic really powerful actor. And for the first half of his intensive, it was, let go, man, let go, let go. Because he was playing it so straight, because on camera, you're trained to downplay everything on the mic. If you don't let it rip, we can't hear what you're actually there to do. By the end of his intensive, he was like, you have transformed me as an actor because you gave me permission to do what I always want to do and just let it rip. And he did so while recording you got to remember, while recording yourself perfectly and while being super creative and adding in all these crazy, amazing appropriate givens bringing the emotional quality. I mean, we had him working on pieces where he was dying. It was beautiful, it was tearjerking. Then we had him doing pieces where he was just playing himself in a crazy situation that I wrote for him. Actually, we cowrote the whole because all the animation stuff is original, but some of his spots were so funny that when I was working on it later with my engineer, we had to take breaks. We were laughing so hard, but he didn't get there until the end. And I'm talking about an incredibly established actor who needed to be slapped around a little bit to be reminded when to let go, how to let go, and how to do it. And once you gain the permission for something like that and you let it rip and you really are getting a grasp of what this industry calls for, then you become unbelievably powerful for everybody out there. Definitely hear that one. Give yourself permission and to let it let it unleash. Or get in touch with Shelley and do some coach and say she'll give you that permission. It's discipline and common sense, right? Because like we said, if you have you're giving your character permission to laugh, but then you don't stop laughing once it's all together and you're really letting it go and everything makes sense and everything is honest, right? Just goes to show, too, like, just how much a voiceover coach can really help you go from A to Z. So props to you, Shelley, for just being you. So fun. All right, so we've gone through all of our auditions here, and I'm going to give this away to Evan. All right, well, Shelley has had her time with the auditions and she has chosen a winner. So we're going to play that one one more time so we can all I didn't even tell you.

Participant #1:
I'm just reading your mind, is that I know. You both know because it made you laugh the whole time. And the winner here is

Participant #1:
well, I'll be bamned. If that's not our friends rearing their ugly heads, then I'm not a lieutenant. All right, boy, strap up. We gotta move. Quadrant 760, we're making our way to the battleground. Eyes on the horizon, Peters. One of you get down, all of you. Now. Turn that thing off. Peters, what are you trying to do, get us all killed?

Participant #1:
No, Peters.

Participant #1:
You shot me, you donkey. No, you sit yourself down. I'm gonna handle this myself. Yeah, I just I love this guy. You can hear the talent. You can hear the potential. You can hear the discipline. Recorded himself really well. There were no spikes, no sound distortion. He went all the way with the honesty, raising the stakes in the drama, therefore executing the comedy. Brilliantly. Had me laughing from start to finish. I would have loved a second take from Eddie. I would have listened to every second of a second take to hear what he would bring to the table, and hopefully it would be a little bit more electrocution and really playing around with that drama. Perfect. Okay, well, everyone, that's a wrap for today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. So, Shelley, how can talent get in touch with you? For sure, for sure. Yes. I am on my website is NYC. Voc.com. I train people all around the world every day of the week. I've got intensive programs for commercial animation and narration. They're ten days long or 14 days long. All of the information is on NYC vo coach. And I'm also on Instagram at Shelley shinnoi, on Facebook, at voiceover coach,

Participant #1:
twitter. Twitter. Oh, I'm on Twitter at Shelley Shinoi. Also. Yeah. Perfect. All right, well, if you'd like to find today's script or any others, check out our [email protected] blog. And for any additional resources from Shelley, feel free to follow her on socials. Awesome. Well, Shelley, thank you so much again. Thank you, everybody who auditioned for this job. And we're brave enough to have your audio broadcast live. All the performances, we appreciate you and incredible work all around. And to everyone tuning in, thank you again for being here and listening today. My name is Evan. And my name is Vanessa. And I'm shelley. And this is Shelly. Thanks so much. See you next time. And happy auditioning.