Debi Derryberry: Behind the Mic

Ever wonder what it takes to become a successful voice artist? Let voiceover veteran Debi Derryberry light the way as she shares her journey from a fledgling talent to a respected icon in the industry. From unforgettable roles like Draculaura and Jimmy Neutron to invaluable collaborations, Debi unveils the secrets behind her illustrious career. If you're an aspiring voice actor, you'll appreciate her candid advice on the importance of a home recording booth and the right equipment.
 
 Do you feel the rhythm in your heart when you perform a song? Join us as we explore the harmony between music and voiceover work, revealing how singing and performing can shape a prosperous career in voice acting. We share our personal experiences, shedding light on the pivotal role of vulnerability in acting, and how singing lessons can cultivate it. 

 The podcast wouldn't be complete without a discussion on the nuts and bolts of podcasting and voiceover work. Discover the wonders of networking and collaboration, the magic of technology in enhancing recordings, and the satisfaction in overcoming insecurities and finding your voice. To top it all off, we dive into the complexities of voiceover dubbing and the criticality of a standout demo. For those interested in learning more, Debi's website: https://www.debiderryberry.com/ and book: Voice-Over 101: How to Succeed as a Voice Actor, Second Edition are incredible resources for aspiring voiceover artists. Join us as we take a closer look at the captivating world of voiceover work.

[END SHOW NOTES]

Voiced by Brian Plaideau

Have you been injured? New Orleans based actor, Jana McCaffery, has been practicing law in Louisiana since 1999, specializing in personal injury since 2008. She takes helping others very seriously.  If you have been injured, Jana is offering a free consultation AND a reduced fee for fellow members of the Lousiana film industry, and she will handle your case from start to finish. She can be reached at janamccaffery@gmail.com or 504-837-1234. Tell Her NOLA Film Scene sent you

Transcript

Debbie Dairy Berry's Career and Diving

Speaker 1 0:03

Hi there, it's Debbie Dairy Berry, best known for the voices of De'Rakilora, and Chewie Neutron, and I'm here on the NOLA film scene podcast, so I'm going to be here. Glad you guys are here. What's NOLA, by the way? Oh yeah, new Orleans. I just learned that this year, take it away guys.

Speaker 3 0:32

Hello, welcome to the NOLA film scene with TJ Play-Doh.

Speaker 2 0:36

I'm TJ.

Speaker 3 0:37

And, as always, I'm Play-Doh.

Speaker 2 0:38

Debbie, thank you so much for joining us. We are so excited I've been excited all day to sit down. So excited.

Speaker 3 0:45

Me too, thanks, I'm excited too.

Speaker 1 0:48

Brian's excited too.

Speaker 3 0:50

Debbie, we met kind of 2022. That's the first time I took your class I forget which brand it was through and it was a joy. I've taken voice acting with Michael Bell and then with Charlie Adler, the force of nature himself. I love him. He's crazy. I really enjoyed yours. I don't want to disparage theirs. Those were good. Let's get down to it. This is what you need. And then boom, it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Speaker 1 1:14

Thank you, I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I like to give people something they can take home and do something with Actual tools.

Speaker 2 1:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:22

And I feel like, having been in the business for 30 years, seeing what has worked for me and what has not, and what the directors are up to now. I know all that because I met it every day.

Speaker 2 1:35

What I liked about your class. I also did your 101, your three videos.

Speaker 2 1:41

The virtual recording class yes, yes, I've taken other voices, other voice classes and, like Brian said, they just do the meat and potatoes. This is how you do, how you layer different accents or voices or different things, but I liked the meat and potatoes that you got into of. Not only is this the voice work, but here's some of the equipment and here's the different levels of equipment, different budget levels of equipment that you can get, and that stuff was also, I found, very helpful.

Speaker 1 2:11

Thank you. Well, it's not cheap getting into voiceover, and not A lot of people can put the cart before the horse, thinking mom said I had a good voice, I'm going to do voiceover and guess what? There's a few steps that are going to need to be taken care of ahead of time, and it's. There's some big steps and they can be very pricey, and I really want people to know that they don't have to break the bank to do it. You can build a booth for 200 bucks. You can buy a mic and interface for $400. And that's a really good piece of equipment. Or you can spend $7,000 on a booth and $7,000 on a mic. Knock yourself out. I didn't do that.

Speaker 3 2:48

Before I forget, I'm also friends with your dad, Mark DeCarlo.

Speaker 1 2:53

My dad loved Mark DeCarlo. He's just a nut. Love that guy. He and his wife Yanny are way too much fun.

Speaker 3 3:00

Yanny is a blast, we're going to have them on one day. I called into his talk show or to Baffle the Bears show and Brad Sherwood was on, and this was during the pandemic, and I invited them to join our improv group online. Oh fine, yeah, he must have brought something Me.

Speaker 1 3:19

No, mark must have really brought it to the show. He's just so clever. I don't know how he comes up with the stuff so fast. His brain is just clickety-clack all the time. Yes, yes, ma'am, I'm like the straight man compared to him.

Speaker 3 3:32

Speaking of straight man, I just saw that you were on hey Vern. It's earned a show. Did I get the title right?

Speaker 1 3:38

Yeah, that's how I got into screen actor skill. Somebody saw me playing Scout at Tennessee Repertory Theater in Nashville and I was 27, playing a 12-year-old, and they said, oh, why don't we put her in our Giovanni TV show as the boy clown? So I played a boy clown and then all of a sudden I was in SAG and I was getting paid way more than I got paid waiting tables and I was able to stop waiting tables and move back to Les Ventulis.

Speaker 2 4:07

Oh wow, excellent. Yeah, we grew up watching him his phrase. You know what I mean, vern, that phrase just kind of stuck.

Speaker 1 4:16

Actually I also started doing stand-in work when I was in Nashville for boys and my agent said do you want to do stand-in work for the little boys on Ernest Costa Count? And I said, sure, 60 bucks a day sitting in the forest is better than 60 bucks a day waiting tables and, you know, work my back. So I stood in for the boys in front of the camera while I set the lights and then they had the AT men and me, being the B team, would sit down and one of the moms said oh, you have a great voice, do you do voiceover? And I was like what is that? Even what is voiceover? This was back in 8990, something like that.

Speaker 1 4:57

So she gave me some names of some casting directors and I brought my little electronic typewriter into the forest that was charged and wrote some letters. My typewriter and I sent my cassette tapes to Los Angeles to like four or five people and wrote me back. And Ginny McSwain she wrote me back. She said great voice, great real cassette, but you really should need to live in LA. So I moved back to home I sort of like could, and Ginny ended up casting me in, you know, bobby's world with Hallie Mandel and directed me and Jimmy Neutron and she was like a big supporter of mine for my whole career after that and it was great.

Speaker 2 5:38

You've had such an impressive career. Brian and I were talking the other day and did the math. We could sit here and take turns reading off your credits and take up an entire hour long episode just talking about your experience.

Speaker 1 5:54

I don't know how well you know. You do anything every day for 30 years, tj, and you're bound to have something to talk about.

Speaker 2 6:01

That's right, good point. So one of your credits stood out to me. Well, a lot of your credits stood out to me, but one stood out in particular that I wanted to ask you about because it's a little different than what you're known for. Yeah, I saw that you were a stunt double and free willy and I wanted to ask you about that.

Speaker 1 6:19

Yeah, I want to tell you about that. I was doing Bobby's world at the time with Howie Mandel and recording at a studio, and my boyfriend at the time was managed by a woman who was managing the boy in this upcoming movie called free willy. He said they're looking for a body double but they have to be a scuba diver and I've been diving since 83, so I've been diving a long time and I'm like, well, I'll audition, I'll go in. And I went in and I was on the plane to Mexico City in two days because they were trying to have all these short, burly men. But the boy was just like 12 years old. He hadn't grown out yet. So, yeah, I spent seven weeks on the back of a whale. They tied hair on me because my hair's short. There he is.

Speaker 3 7:06

That's amazing.

Speaker 1 7:09

Isn't that cool. I have a caveat to that, but I would never, ever take that job again because I am a strong opponent to mammals in captivity. I think it's a horrible thing to do and I didn't know that then. How horrible it was. Now I know. But as far as a very cool job, it was really cool.

Speaker 1 7:29

I had to get in the tank with the whale every day and they lower what's called a hookah line, which is like you don't have to carry the tank, you just have the regulator in a long hose and a weight belt. And I just sat on the bottom of the pool and let Kiko swim back and forth that was a whale's name and he'd come and look at me and I was just like the toy. There was a trainer that told him what to do. I was a squeaky toy. They'd say fetch and he'd go get me and that was my big trick.

Speaker 1 7:56

There's this scene where the boy runs around the whale tank, trips, falls, hits his head, falls in sinks and then the whale comes and scoops him up and brings him 18 feet up and flips him on the deck. I was hired to sink and get rescued. But the stuntwoman they got to run and trip and fall and go in the tank and go still and sink. She couldn't stay still because she was too scared. Of course she hadn't been in the whale tank for a month, like me being friends with them but, what's it still in the dark?

Speaker 1 8:29

They asked me, and I did that as well. The running, tripping and falling and sinking.

Speaker 1 8:33

I basically was on the floor 18 feet down in 60 degree water at 10 o'clock at night, with no wet suit, and the director had a speaker under water and he was like whale is approaching. I had not had lacyx surgery so I was legally blind and it was dark and I'd have my hookah lying in and they'd give me two tons on it and I'd take my final breath, took the hose away and then I felt this gyration of the water as the whale was approaching. I had to let go of the grate and float up a little bit and then the whale came and stuck his nose under me and brought me to the surface at a rate, so my lungs didn't explode and I had to exhale.

Speaker 1 9:13

The cameraman told me to exhale, a note like it took me to the top and flipped me over and I think I made it. It maybe three takes. It was a pretty cool job.

Speaker 2 9:22

That's awesome.

Speaker 1 9:23

But if you freeze that scene you'll totally see the boy has a-.

Speaker 3 9:27

He has a girl shavers.

Speaker 2 9:30

I'll have to go watch it now. I love sea life and diving. I was very much into diving for a long time. I was a cave diver and a deep technical diver for a long time.

Speaker 1 9:44

Yeah, I don't really enjoy deep dives. Even though I'm not bent, I still get kind of goofy feeling and I just two dives at 50 feet, enough for me, and I have to be in warm enough water where I don't need a wet suit.

Speaker 2 9:56

Yeah, that's right. I got narked one time inside a cave. That was interesting.

Speaker 1 10:01

That's so weird.

Speaker 3 10:03

Now I've never dove. You said you got narked. Could you explain that to me in the listener? Sure.

Speaker 2 10:09

Sure. So when you dive, your body does not metabolize nitrogen. So at depth nitrogen becomes narcotic and it affects everybody differently at different depths. Some people never experience it. Usually around the 100 foot mark is where it can kick in. And if you've been diving a lot in a particular day and you have more nitrogen built up in your system, you're more susceptible to it. And I was inside a cave at about 105 feet and my dive buddy did something and I'm like that dude's narked and I started laughing.

Speaker 1 10:45

It makes you feel drunk, right, it makes you lightheaded and you lose your sense of what you shouldn't be doing.

Multifaceted Musician and Voiceover Artist Journey

Speaker 2 10:52

Right, like people will take the regulators out and try to give them the fish, but I had the presence of mine. I started laughing hysterically and I realized I'm nark and I just ascended a couple of feet, two or three feet and just within a few feet it stopped, and that was my experience because usually, brian, at at a hundred feet you're good for maybe six, seven minutes, unless you're, you know, prepared for that kind of death I got you?

Speaker 3 11:55

Yeah, I'll stick with the bathtub. This, debbie, we've been really kind of focusing when we asked people on what inspired you to initially get into the business. You know we've heard your coincidence story, which I always love that right place, right time and it brought you along different stages in your career. Can you think back? Some people was high school, for me it's later in life, just four years ago when I was 48, but what inspired you to go down the path of an entertainer?

Speaker 1 12:20

Growing up we always sang. I got my first guitar when I was nine because I wanted something to sing along to and my cousin had a guitar and she was trying to play and sing and I thought, well, I could do that. And I did, and my dad and mom we all did community theater. But the best part for me was singing and hearing harmonies and then having people clap for me. That's like a drug for me. People clap for me. I love that. I don't need it so much anymore, but I always loved that growing up and I loved singing and playing my songs for people and that lasted my whole life. From the time I was nine I always had a buddy or I had a girlfriend down the street. We wrote so many songs together. We had a little group called I don't think I've ever told anybody this, it was called Peeve us and Po-Dum, something in the Po-Dum. Anyway, we wrote a bunch of songs and we thought we were really great. There's lots of harmonies, the harmonies to me. It just makes me so happy. And dad always said you know, you can't make a living doing that. So I decided I would just be a doctor. So I went to UCLA and I did the whole pre-med thing. I graduated in kinesiology with pre-med and I knew it was time to go to med school and I wanted to sing. I needed to sing. So I tried to do the medical school but I interviewed once, so it's like it's not for me. And then I got my real estate license and like I got a singing. So one of my friends said you got moved to Nashville. I said okay, backed up, moved to Nashville and started just singing all the time and waiting tables with my college degree, as many of us do. And then you heard the part about doing to kill a walking bird and doing hey, burn its earnest. And then getting them moved back and start voiceover. The doors just started opening. I just started booking voiceover. I mean I had had microphone experience because I always did singing clubs and open mic nights and then I never stopped singing. But then I had my kid and one of my cousins said you should record your kids songs because I write kids songs also. So I did, I made an album. My kid was just very little. So I did concerts all over the United States and I performed probably at most Barnes and Nobles and a couple of big places and I had a number one hit in XM Sirius and a lot of my songs charted in the top 10, and I love the cheats music. I took a break from the kids music and kept up with my country band called Honey Pig, have a three part kind of chick harmony band and we just played, actually last week here in LA. I love that so much. But I keep coming back to the kids music and I'm getting ready to release another kids album. We'll be ready in about six weeks.

Speaker 1 14:55

I love voiceover. It's great fun and it pays the bills. Music has never paid the bills for me, but I don't. I can't stop Right, it's it's what they call. I work for my passion. You know, although I voiceover is my passion too, I love it and I love sharing about it. So I just have a lot of things I do and I like doing them all. I make hand creams. I've been making hand lotion for about 20 years and I put it on my website and everybody comes over and buys it. I have tons of recipes that I make on my YouTube channel. I have lots of DIY things on my YouTube channel. I don't make an earthquake kit, picture dogs, toys. I want a button, blah, blah blah. I just like to stay busy and it's probably hard to be around me because I never stood sale, never shit, still at all.

Speaker 2 15:39

So thank you.

Speaker 1 15:40

Did I even answer your question.

Speaker 2 15:42

Yes, you did, you did.

Speaker 3 15:43

You did because of this. It's on the internet. Folks and TJ and I it's we're always like trying to make sure each other gets a chance to talk, so I was sitting back like I didn't thank you. So thank you for sharing that. I love that. Your day job is something that we're aspiring to. My dream of being a tune. I'm already a tune. I just need to have somebody to record it and draw me, you know, but that's right. Yeah, you did answer the question, thank you.

Speaker 2 16:04

Yeah, so I had. I got two voiceover auditions this for this past weekend and then another one that I have to do tonight and one of them requires singing, and that is probably my weakest point. I've been taking Brian and I both have been taking singing lessons for a while now. I introduced him to my singing coach a while back and I took a little break from it and he continued on for that very reason, to strengthen his voice for voiceover and for the auditions that'll require it, and I know for cartoons that's going to be a necessity. I started taking the singing lessons just to help me with acting, to get over vulnerability hangups that I had. I had a hard time allowing myself to show vulnerability at first and it really helped with that. I don't know that singing is ever going to be my strength when it comes to voice work.

Speaker 1 16:56

Here's the thing TJ about singing is that in an animated show they seldom need Broadway singers, unless it's a Disney Princess feature. Usually they want somebody who can sing in character and it doesn't have to be Broadway quality. And there's Melodyne all these tuning apps on Logic where you can, the music supervisor or whoever's doing the songs for that will record you on it and just auto tune you if need be. If you can basically carry a tune and you can keep a beat. It shouldn't keep you from auditioning. And I tell people who are auditioning for animation I love Twisted Wave.

Speaker 1 17:35

It's a great piece of software, but if you're going to do singing auditions at the end of your animation audition, you really need Adobe Audition or something that you can multi-track on so you can import the karaoke track. I didn't do it for a long time. I would just play it on my phone and record that with me singing with it, but then you make a mistake. You have to start over. The Adobe Audition has been just great and we have to learn so much, don't we as voice actors? You can't just be a voice actor, you gotta be a sound engineer too.

Podcast Equipment and Collaboration in Entertainment

Speaker 1 18:11

And that's why a lot of people who are old enough to not remember cell phones, to remember dial phones technology can be very overwhelming. So a lot of people in our senior community in voiceover can't do their own engineering and not older people, but 50 and older, whatever. If they want to get into voiceover and they haven't learned all this stuff, they have to start from scratch and there's a lot to know. So it's the same thing as I was saying before it's a lot more than just having a good voice. I would say that the engineering component is big. It's obviously not impossible or I would never have been able to do it, but I can do it and it's challenging and it's fun and there's resources, there's people who can help you and they will help you. You meet lots of friends in these classes, like we had. You guys came to my online coaching class last couple weeks and it's been great meeting everybody and everyone has such great different skills and I can text a friend of mine and Adobe is doing this and he'll say do this, boom.

Speaker 2 19:19

I wanted to ask what interface do you use in your home studio?

Speaker 1 19:22

I use an Apollo Twin. I will say that I don't eat an Apollo Twin. I could probably be fine with the solo, but for animation. I'm not an engineer, but I have found that the Scarlet is a great interface for commercial promo audio books. I just think it doesn't work as good as an Apollo Twin. And there's a lot of other ones too. The Centrance Yamaha makes one that have I don't want to say like a compressor, but something that you can use a lot of plugins in.

Speaker 2 19:50

I use a Scarlet for the podcast and a solid state logic for my voiceover booth.

Speaker 1 19:57

I also use something called IZOTO which helps I run a couple of things in my stack, like when I'm done auditioning I'll press a button and it'll do a bunch of things to the audition. Where it'll like normalize it, press it and give it the IZOTO, which takes out the mouth clicks. I don't drink coffee, I drink so much water but I always have the smackies, and the IZOTO just goes in and takes out the clicks.

Speaker 2 20:26

Do you use a noise gate on the front end at all?

Speaker 1 20:29

I don't know, what that means.

Speaker 3 20:30

Probably that's my world too. I love TJ to death the way I figured out how to describe it. He is English grammar and I am English story. He does the research. He's great with the technical and getting down.

Speaker 3 20:42

I always wanted to do a podcast. I can't say always, because I'm not 50, so they weren't always there. Oh, that'd be fun to do, that'd be fun to talk to people, and I just kind of well. And then we met at a class called the Circle Exercise, which all of our friends that have been guests on this have been in the circle, and the teacher even came on. Then I introduced him to improv and then we were just talking.

Speaker 3 21:00

When he goes, you know I'm taking some singing lessons and right then that week I decided I need to do my daily exercises for vocal and I need an inspiration and I need to find a singing class. And then he says it cool, how about that? Isn't that cool? And then he goes do you want to do a podcast? Yeah, so without his computer, know how I wouldn't be here. We also overloaded him. He's working his tail off. So I said, let me buy the Adobe stuff, let me start trying. And now I formulate the episode. I get a flow right, send it to him and then he does the sound work, so that's causing me to learn it. And then it's like, hey, I'm learning, I can make that video. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 21:34

It keeps inspiring yeah.

Speaker 1 21:36

So you meet all these people with different skills and you can help each other out. I spend most of my morning not getting paid, just answering people's questions and trying to help people. Somebody emailed me this morning on their college graduation project. They needed some advice on something or other to do with voiceover and mics, and it's just always something. And the music business takes up so much of my time because there's so much to know. I'm taking a music publishing and sync class for the last three years. There's so much to know, it's so much to do and it's so much fun and I'm hoping that I can marry like cartoons at the preschool world with some of my music someday.

Speaker 3 22:16

Nice.

Speaker 1 22:17

But getting back to the noise gate, I must have that because I'll set the gain if I know what my highest is and it never over-modulates. I think that's probably what that is.

Speaker 2 22:28

It's a way to stop some sounds Like if you have background noise like a fan or any kind of noise coming in, you can set a noise gate on the front end.

Speaker 1 22:38

Oh, he recorded my room tone and then accounted for it with the stack. Yeah, got you. Yeah. For those of you who are watching this who don't know what a stack is, it's a series of command that your computer gives your recording that does things to it. That is magic. It's like, okay, normalize it and then on top of that put some compression, on top of that, do the click remover, on top of that have your noise gate for your room tone and all those things put together is called your stack and it's individual for you and your recording space.

Speaker 3 23:07

All right, excellent, thank you. We call that TJ.

Speaker 2 23:11

Yeah, there's so much to learn with this.

Speaker 1 23:14

Yeah, there are specialists that do home studios. You know, there's Dan Landert and Brian Showalter and George Whidham and Uncle Roy Yockelson. There's all kinds of people you can call to help you out with that, because we're not all engineers and we're not all techie like TJ, the techie TJ.

Speaker 3 23:30

I met Brian. Brian met Brian. He was the engineer from Michael Bell's class.

Speaker 1 23:34

Oh, brian Showalter, yeah, he's, fabulous.

Speaker 3 23:36

I like what he yes, he is Mike. We'll record it and then send us what we did. Of course, we can't share that publicly. I thought that was fantastic.

Speaker 1 23:45

Brian is my engineer. I help people with their demos and he handles all that for me.

Speaker 3 23:50

He's great.

Speaker 1 23:51

He's also in a band, and my husband played bass for him for a while.

Speaker 3 23:54

Everybody knows everybody. It works with everybody Pretty much. After taking the class with Olivia, because it's not like people said, oh, you have such a horrible voice, but like being in a choir, and it's like, hey, how'd I do? And people would go well, you get the lukewarm response. And so I just I don't like the sound of my voice, I don't want to sing. 40 years later I said, let me try. So in working with her I'm kind of a crooner and I also am a good mimic, which is great for the voice acting too. But I was afraid to publish. I'm never going to do an album, so then I put out a few that I like. You know what I mean Songs or albums, songs, no albums yet Just a video on social media. Okay, yeah, yeah, from your lips to God's ears. Maybe I will one day, but Rob Paulson, marisa Lamarche are coming to New Orleans in January.

Speaker 1 24:36

Okay, are they doing a con there?

Speaker 3 24:38

Yes, ma'am, or the concert, fan Expo, and Tara Strong Can't wait to meet them all. So I did an Animaniac song in class. I was like, oh, this is pretty so. It's Dr Scratch and sniff, a German. And then he's asking what the characters are, if you've ever heard that song, and they say maybe we're dogs, maybe we're this. Well, I did a little German and then, as each, I didn't try to match the voices, but as they were talking like they were dogs okay, maybe we are dogs, cute little dogs and went through it. I was like, god, that's pretty good, let me release it and tag Robin and he goes. Hello, brian, great job, kiddo, can't wait to see you next year.

Speaker 1 25:11

Okay, oh, great Robbie is so sweet. That's wonderful Nice. What months are they going?

Speaker 3 25:19

January.

Speaker 1 25:19

Oh, okay, I have a new con agent so I'll be looking for next year. But I Too soon so far. January's too soon Still be on our England trip.

Speaker 3 25:30

Oh, I got you, I'm trying for a media pass. Now that we have a podcast, I'm trying. And then Pensacon. I usually don't leave New Orleans because I work seven days a week cleaning bars. It's kind of tough.

Speaker 1 25:41

Does that mean you have to work when it's dark outside?

Speaker 3 25:43

Yeah, I've got it so that I'll get up at like 5 am instead of 3. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 25:48

Okay.

Speaker 3 25:49

But I've always been kind of a graveyard guy and I was death's photo double, so go figure that out. I know I was goth without the makeup since the 80s, but I might be able to get a media pass through a connection for the Pensacon one and so that one's in February. If you need somebody to book, you Hit that up.

Speaker 1 26:08

I'm free in February. If you want to call the Pensacon people and tell them book Debbie, I'll go.

Speaker 3 26:14

I'll do what I can. I have no pool, but I'll do what I can. I'll play in this here.

Speaker 1 26:18

I'll go anywhere. Anyone wants me to Sweet that? Cons are fun.

Speaker 3 26:22

I like it. I've met Ross Marquan, jim Cummings and Billy West, and what I do is I'll pay instead of a picture or an autograph. I like pictures more than autographs of people but I'll say can we play voices? You know so then, and I'll come out with a little guy and then he'll do something. So the bouncing back, for you know, however it goes, then that's always fun.

Speaker 1 26:41

Well, it is so much fun. Right, we were doing a I don't know a voiceover concert and Robbie and Jimmy and I used to have a band called the Tasmaniacs, and so I brought us back together for a performance a few years ago. I called Robbie Rest and Billy West and Jimmy Cummings and me and my husband Blake Bayes, and we did a set that was super fun. Wow, we're all good guys.

Speaker 3 27:03

Me and it's fun, and with acting and on camera it's a little more cutthroat. The improv community.

Speaker 1 27:08

Little Backstabbing On camera people.

Speaker 3 27:11

No, I was trying to be nice. I don't have much experience and I'm trying to get into it. Debbie, calm down, I'll just get on.

Speaker 1 27:17

We're just fun and voiceover Everything is nice.

Speaker 3 27:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1 27:20

It's everybody's friendly and fun and nice and normal, because we don't get big heads, because no one ever recognizes us.

Speaker 3 27:28

Yeah.

Speaker 1 27:29

Unless we're at conventions, then they know who we are.

Speaker 3 27:31

And that's what I hear and watching, like I know that voice Like John DiMaggio, yeah, like voice actors would be like, well, I'm not good for this job, but what about Debbie? So they'll share the well Yo totally Same thing I've done that so many times.

Speaker 1 27:44

I did that with uh, was auditioning for something once and I'm like I can do this, but you know who could really do it is Caitlyn Robrech. So I call Caitlyn and I'm like Caitlyn, why aren't you auditioning for this? She goes, my agent wouldn't send it to me. I said tell them to send it to you and they did, and she booked it. Thank you, cait. And now she's the new voice of Minnie Mouse.

Speaker 2 28:03

Wow, oh wow.

Speaker 1 28:04

After a rusey past away. Yeah, you know I love all my voice over people. We're good. We just work hard like regular people. Yeah, it's, it's not easy. You know all day, every day, and if you're not auditioning, you got to be doing what you guys are doing. You know meeting people and networking, figuring out who can help you, who can you help, what shows do you want to be on, how do I meet them? What class can I take? What can I afford to take?

Speaker 3 28:28

When I can't afford it. What videos do I watch? What books can I get scrowns?

Speaker 1 28:32

And that's what I did my holiday special because my rates are fairly high. But I thought there's so many people that I want to help, so I made a holiday special class and it filled up right away. So I made another one and then that filled up right away. So I made another one and that filled up right away. So I'm done. But I'm giving people this, this special rate, because I want to be able to help as many people as I can.

Speaker 3 28:53

Yeah, I saw it Awesome and I was like TJ, you need to take this class.

Speaker 2 28:56

Yeah, so for recording, are you going to a studio for actual job stuff or do you record any of the work at home in your home studio, or is that strictly for auditions?

Voice Acting Dubbing Work and Demos

Speaker 1 29:08

Both Before pandemic I would do all my auditions from home. Sometimes I'd go in to do an audition During pandemic. I did both auditions and job from home because I have a I'm pointing behind me that you guys can't see, but I have this closet that I converted to my goof right there. I love it very much. So after pandemic I go in for some jobs. But you know I have my little job and if it's just a guest spot on an Nickelodeon cartoon, I'll just record it from here. Or if it's a video game and they want me in studio or remote, you know, if it's down the way down in Santa Monica and it's afternoon, I'm not driving, because in LA to drive 10 miles that's an hour and a half and that's three hour drive for a 20 minute session. A lot of them are from home, but I'm happy to go into studio.

Speaker 1 29:55

I do a lot of dubbing work for movies that have been dubbed into English. Or you know cartoons that have been dubbed from another language and I can do those from home. But I prefer to be in studio for that because there's so many details in syncing and when you're remote there's a delay. It's just no avoiding the delay. So what happens is the engineer has to stop, lay it in, line it up and play it back for the director, and that takes a little bit of extra time. But if you're in studio, they see it happening in real time, so I prefer to go in.

Speaker 3 30:28

It's hard enough to do it in person, not that I have experience, but just watching the nice beep, beep, beep and then matching the mouth movements in the syllables.

Speaker 1 30:35

Yeah, I mean animation is much more forgiving because they can adjust the mouth flaps and moving down and forth. But when you're doing a live action there's no adjusting their mouth flaps, so that's a little more challenging. But having done it for so many decades, you get your skill sets down and it is a different set of skill sets for every facet and VO. You know, ADR is different than animation, is different than commercial and different than like a dramatic show. It's different than promo or audiobooks. They're all so different.

Speaker 2 31:06

And the worlds are so different. Is there very much by way of union jobs for audiobooks?

Speaker 1 31:12

I don't do audiobooks, so I can't answer that question. Mostly no, but there are the worst jobs and the better jobs, the worst ones, where you record it from home and you do your own editing and you make, you know, $50 per finished hour. And then there's the ones where you make a lot more and you don't have to do your own editing, but you certainly require a break, a studio break or a soundproof booth, because you can't have any interruptions. It's better if you have no dogs, no kids, no life, and if you're a night owl I have dogs, I'm not. I go to bed really early and I don't enjoy it. I have to be like busy doing little things all the time. So, yeah, audiobooks is without me. I did one of them, but I do have to do one audiobook, though. I decided that I will narrate Debbie Derryberry's voiceover 101, how to succeed as a voice actor so people could listen to it.

Speaker 3 32:01

It's good you know the author. It does help. So TJ and I have been talking. Here's two questions. You can answer both or neither. Whatever One professional demo when do you need to get it? Can you make one at home, like we have a booth so we have a little bit better than some people and then pay to play sites? Any word on?

Speaker 1 32:17

that. So pay to play sites If you have pieces of a demo, you don't have to have a full competitive demo to be up on a pay to play site. I would never pay for like a titanium membership because unless you're really booking all the time and you can afford that but you have to really be your own boss on a pay to play site. I've booked a couple things through there. I do have profiles up on a couple of them and if you don't live in LA and you still want to get auditions, I think it's a marvelous way of being able to make a living and there's so many of them and I know a dog or a bunny one of them you don't even have to audition, they just give you the jobs. I'm not against them at all. You kind of have to be careful what you're doing and certainly they'll make sure you get paid and you sometimes get longtime clients from them.

Speaker 1 33:03

Demos A demo for a pay to play might be different than the demo for an agent. If the purpose of your demo is to get an agent, is it for a local, regional, small agent or a big LA agent? If it's for an LA agent, you have to compete with my demo. So it better be stellar and you can possibly do them at home. But I would never trust my own ear on my demo. I always recommend that people have somebody who has their ear in tune with what demos should sound like so they can tell you that's boring. You just repeated a character I tuned out. You can't land that accent. Get it off your demo. You don't sound like a little kid. Get it off your demo. Like there were bubbles on my screen. Trim.

Speaker 3 33:46

Riverside did that. I've never seen that before.

Speaker 1 33:47

Do you see it? It's kind of cool. I had thought too.

Speaker 2 33:51

You were thinking if we get the video out people will be able to see that.

Speaker 1 33:54

So I think, wait, are we in?

Speaker 3 33:55

a cartoon.

Speaker 1 33:57

They just follow me everywhere.

Speaker 3 33:58

I knew it. I knew it was a tune Yay.

Speaker 1 34:02

So if your purpose of the demo is to get an agent, it better be stellar, it better be under a minute and a half. For commercial or animation I can't speak to promo demos or audiobook demos but for video games, for animation, for commercial. People are not going to listen to that, they're bored to death. It's a chore. People aren't like, oh goody, another demo to listen to, they're like ugh. And so it has to keep someone's attention. So I'm pretty brutal when I help people with their demos and I try not to be repetitive at all and try to make it listenable.

Speaker 1 34:36

And I'll have my students go to the top agencies and I'm saying listen to these people's demos, see how they sound. Which characters can you do? So most people cannot do demos at home. Sometimes I will have people record their pieces at home, send me the pieces and we'll edit them together and then send them on to the engineer who will make them all sound equal and put the music behind them and line it up and explosions. For a pay-to-play demo you just have to do little bitty spots. I think they like them separated. Here's my car commercial. Here's my hospital commercial. Here's my Verizon commercial. Again, I wouldn't recommend putting anything more than a 10 to 12-second clip, which you'd basically steal from a transcribed eyespottv commercial or write it yourself.

Speaker 3 35:24

That's good to know. Yes, my goal is to be in your level of demo.

Speaker 1 35:28

And for that reason, if you're going to put any effort into making a demo, there are people who will charge you a flat fee for a demo three, four, five grand. That's not how I roll, but I don't think that people who are ready to make a demo or are really great shouldn't be penalized for being so great. So I charge hourly. That way, if somebody can knock it out of the park quicker, they'll cost them as much.

Speaker 3 35:50

Good to know we don't have to just go to a studio, especially during the podcast has lent us to building our booths and TJs when we record. Oh, you got the negative 65 decibels. That's great for audiobooks, so just learning different things, if I even got that right, Did I get it right? Tj.

Speaker 2 36:04

Yeah.

Speaker 3 36:06

So we're learning those things about our setup and then, like what you say, we can find our stuff recorded here and then send it to somebody. So that's a big help. I thank you for that.

Speaker 1 36:13

Now, brian, if I may, I think I told I don't know if I told you this on our session, but your background is so very dark.

Speaker 3 36:20

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 36:21

I told one of my students and she was at Darling with a really nice cute voice, and I'm like you got to wear a white t-shirt or a light colored t-shirt and a light colored background so you don't look dreary and dark, because animation and dreary and dark, they don't go together.

Speaker 3 36:36

Oh see, I never think about the video part. I like being in the dark so no one can see me when I'm doing my stuff.

Speaker 1 36:41

But when you do record a session, you're on Zoom and they look at you. You don't have to turn on your camera, but sometimes they like your camera to be on. So sometimes the animators are there and they ask permission to record you because they want to know what your face looks like. How do you get that sound out? Had this one session well, lots of sessions but filmed me and gave it to the animators and when I watched the character, she was like cross-eyed and went like this all the time. Apparently that's what I do in front of the mic for this character Go cross-eyed and go like this a lot.

Speaker 3 37:15

That's excellent. Thank you for that tip, but now I got to come out of the dark.

Speaker 1 37:18

I don't know what I'm going to do, you'll be fine. It's just, people don't have a big attention span. They like to look at things that are bright and cheerful. Take from that what you will and I didn't have to say a thing. But I don't have any filters. My girlfriend just bought me a t-shirt that said you know, that thing that people have that keeps over them saying things they shouldn't. I don't have that.

Speaker 3 37:38

I appreciate that. She did say it nicely.

Speaker 1 37:40

My husband's British and he'll tell me all the time if I'm inappropriate. You know I'm like really that was that bad Excellent.

Classes and Resources for Voiceover Pursuits

Speaker 3 37:51

Debbie, it has been a pleasure. First it was a pleasure taking your class, and now you have graciously come and joined us here on our podcast and we are thrilled and we can't thank you enough for sharing yourself with us.

Speaker 1 38:01

Thank you guys. Thank you so much for having me on Brian and TG. I loved having you in my class and I love how you guys are dedicated to voiceover and tech and podcasts and learning all this. I respect that and I wish you all the success in the world. Let me hear for you if you need anything.

Speaker 2 38:16

Thank you, Thank you, and I definitely will be coming to see you for some private lessons.

Speaker 3 38:21

I'm here, Deb, before we go. Is there anything you'd like to share?

Speaker 1 38:24

Well, I do have this book I wrote called Voiceover 101, how to Succeed as a Voice Artist. A second edition I wrote After Tech in COVID. It's available on Amazon. It has everything I know about voiceover poured into it, so hopefully I can share that with other people. Also on my website, debbiedaryberrycom, I have some classes on there you can take virtually and some little individual classes, bigger classes, and I hope that'll help people in their voiceover pursuit.

Speaker 2 38:50

We will drop it in the description, in the show description, when the episodes published will put your website on there. And I took your class, your virtual one, and it was great. It was great information. There were three, there's three videos, so go check out our website.

Speaker 1 39:06

Thank, you Check those videos out. Really nice to hear from someone who took it. Thank you, I have the book.

Speaker 2 39:11

I do too. Yeah, I have the book as well.

Speaker 3 39:13

And I watch the videos Voice. Well, you learn how to how to do burp.

Speaker 1 39:16

Thanks you guys. All right, bye, bye you guys, thanks for having me on. Thanks for having me on.