Justin:

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. Today, I am Justin Lewis. I actually am always Justin Lewis, but today I'm joined with Tanner Whelan. Go ahead and say hi, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Hey guys.

Justin:

And we have today with us a very special guest, Victor Baveen. And for me, he's kind of, he has a special place in my heart because I first got introduced to really anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons by listening to the R.A. Salvatore books about Dredd Stoerden. I listened to them on audiobook and the voice actor who really personified, in my opinion, Drizztorodin was Victor Bavine. So having him here with us is a real treat for me personally because, like I said, I have fond memories of long road trips, listening to Drizzt battle the monsters of the Underdark and then make his way to the surface and kind of go through a, you know, a similar trek I think a lot of us go through when we're trying to find out who we are and where we fit in life. Thank you for being here, Victor. And if you want to, you can add to that introduction however you want. But thank you for being here.

Victor:

Sure, my pleasure. I'm thrilled that I've been doing the Driz books for about 10 years now. And I think I'm up to 40 plus. I've done all but I think three of them. And those were done before I got involved. And yeah, I've been an actor my whole life and I'm also a writer and entrepreneur. started doing audiobooks about 17 years ago and this was one of the first really big projects that I got. So, you know, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled the fans like it. I get a lot of really fun emails. In fact, the best one I've ever, one of the best ones I've ever gotten, I don't want to choose best, but this guy wrote me and said how... he was going blind actually, and he was unable to read to his children anymore. And so they would listen to the DRISD books as bedtime stories together. And it really brought a tear to my eye. So I'm thrilled

Tanner Weyland:

Wow.

Victor:

to be here, but I love the books, I'm thrilled to be here.

Justin:

Awesome. Yeah. Having experiences like that has to be life changing because in, you know, in accounting, you don't have the opportunity to change someone's life like that. Right. So, uh, well, let's get into some of our questions. Uh, and, you know, I thought one reason having you on the podcast would be so great is because as people play Dungeons and Dragons, uh, one thing that a lot of people kind of are drawn towards naturally is just kind of the the attempts at voice acting. And I think it's a really great way to help your players become immersed. And so I thought it would be a great, a great thing to have you on and kind of talk about that. But you also mentioned that you're also a writer. So tell us a little bit kind of how you got into voice acting and writing and kind of how those two interweave and things like that.

Victor:

Well, I pretty much always wanted to be an actor. I decided when I was five that I wanted to be an actor because I saw this TV show. I wasn't allowed to have a dog. I really wanted a dog and my mom wouldn't let me get a dog. And I saw this TV show about vaudeville and there was this one dog act and I got into my head that as an actor, I could have a dog.

Tanner Weyland:

Ha

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

ha.

Victor:

so anyway, so I decided I always wanted to be an actor and then I always thought it was, I love to read and I, you know, I just... Classically trained as an actor, so I've done a lot of Shakespeare. So I think it really sets you up well for reading large blocks of text and making it understandable, cuz that's the trick of being a narrator is knowing how to use language, what we would call heightened language to. to tell the story, but at the same time, keep it personal and human without getting too involved in technique. So anyway, so I had been acting for years and I was living in LA and toward the end of my time in LA, my manager asked me, how would you like to read the Bible? And I said, okay. I was hired by this company to do, there were like eight of us, and I read six books of the Old Testament, six books of the New. And it was pretty cool, pretty cool way to make a living. And then I moved back to New York and I actually bought this house in New Jersey, in Newark, for God knows why I did it. Because I wanted

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Victor:

a project to renovate this, renovate this old historic home. And so I... I was in the midst of doing that and it was right when Audible was moving to Newark, moving their headquarters to Newark. And I happened to see an interview with the CEO and the in the local paper and I got on the company website and I emailed him. I figured out his email address. It was dcatz at audible.com.

Tanner Weyland:

Ha

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

ha.

Victor:

so I just emailed. Thanks for taking a chance on Newark. I said I did the same thing. I bought this house and my friend said I was crazy to move from Santa Monica to Newark, but here I am and here's my voiceover demo. And I'd love to come in for an audition. The CEO emailed me two days later and said, yeah, come in for an audition. So that's how I got started to really do an audiobooks. And that was, gosh, 2007 or eight

Tanner Weyland:

Okay.

Victor:

and I've done probably 350 books at this point and I'd always wanted to be a writer. I'd been writing screenplays when I was in LA and almost got a couple of movies off the ground and then I had a project that almost was super close. We had the money and I'm almost in the bank and then the financial crisis hit and the money disappeared. I was supposed to direct it and I'd written the screenplay and So it all fell apart and I said, well, I've always wanted to write a novel, now's the time. So I wrote the first draft of the novel and it was awful. It was basically the screenplay without formatting and because I didn't know how to write fiction, it was right around that time that I started narrating at Audible. And then two years later, I picked up the novel again after having probably. narrated 40 books and I suddenly started writing again. I said, oh I know how to write prose fiction now Because it was that was like my 10,000 hours. It was all it was all there so that so it all did kind of meld really nicely together and So that's sort of how I got to do all of it

Tanner Weyland:

Wow, I love that so much. That's man, what a roller coaster. Hot

Victor:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

dang. So

Victor:

Yeah, it's the life of an artist.

Tanner Weyland:

did you find that you kind of naturally gravitated to narrating the fictional books or was that purely coincidental that they were like, hey, you're great for this?

Victor:

It was just coincidental. I've done a lot of, like I just, my most recent book I just finished last week was about the Russo-Ukrainian War. Very intense, deeply historical. really dense. Normally, the process is generally a book called takes about four or five days to record and then you come in for like an hour or two of pickups, stuff that you got wrong and you have to go in and fix. And normally the most I generally, I have anywhere between 20 and 50 pickups in a project when I can knock that out in an hour. This we had 350 pickups. because the names, the Ukrainian and Russian names, you know, they wanted them so specific and really perfect. So, and then the longest book I've ever done, single book was a book called Gotham, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning history of New York City. And it's two volumes and it's 4,000 pages. And that took four months.

Tanner Weyland:

Wait,

Victor:

And

Tanner Weyland:

so

Victor:

that...

Tanner Weyland:

4,000, that many pages, how many hours is that? Like, it's gotta

Victor:

It's

Tanner Weyland:

be

Victor:

a

Tanner Weyland:

a lot.

Victor:

60 hours, about 60 hours. Yeah,

Tanner Weyland:

Hot day.

Victor:

yeah, it's a commitment. It's a great, it's a great book. I mean, it's a fantastic, I mean, you know, and I love New York, I'm a native New Yorker and I love delving into the history. And so it was fun. But then I loved doing the fantasy too. I loved doing fiction and I mean, I've done some, you know, classic fiction like Vonnegut. But... I'd done a couple of other fantasy series before I got the Drift. And the Drift thing was, you know, it was interesting how it came to me. Cause they had recorded a couple of the books, not starting from book one. And they had two different narrators and everybody hated the narrators apparently. And so they, Wizards of the Coast, came to Audible and they said, we need to find a new narrator. So they did a contest where they recorded, they had three of us that Ari Salvador approved, and then they put it on the fan website and the fans chose me.

Tanner Weyland:

Well, that's

Victor:

53%

Tanner Weyland:

awesome.

Victor:

of the fans chose me. So there was already like a lot of buy-in, you know? And I still get, when people come to those other books, I get all these like Twitter messages saying, what happened, where'd you go? Did they fire you?

Justin:

Ha ha ha!

Victor:

No, no, just be patient, I'll be back. But the

Tanner Weyland:

I'm

Victor:

fun

Tanner Weyland:

sorry.

Victor:

thing with the, so many of you were saying about character stuff, character voices, the fun thing about... about fantasy is that you really can take liberties with the voices. In general, they want you to be really subtle with characters and like obviously in you know non-fiction stuff but even in fiction they want you to be fairly subtle but you know you can just go crazy with the um I love some of the voices that I've managed to create and it's fun funny because I won't tell you. I will never reveal this, but Jarlaxle is one of my favorite voices that I created and a lot of people love that voice. And one of the ways sometimes I'll create voices is I'm so bad at celebrity impersonations that I'll

Tanner Weyland:

Hahaha

Victor:

do a celebrity impersonation and it'll come out as a voice but nobody recognizes it.

Tanner Weyland:

I'm

Victor:

And that's

Tanner Weyland:

sorry.

Victor:

how Jarlaxle started. So he's based on a celebrity, but I will never tell you who it is.

Justin:

I'm gonna have to go back and listen and kind of play Celebrity Bingo and see, you know, like process

Victor:

Yeah,

Justin:

of elimination.

Victor:

I would love it if you guessed it, but I don't think you will. It's so bad.

Tanner Weyland:

That's amazing.

Justin:

Yeah, and I do have to say Jarlaxle is, he's one of my favorite characters too. He's complex, but he's also mysterious and kind of cheeky. And I think a lot of people idealize that and wish they were like that in real life, right?

Victor:

I think that the genius of Bob's books is that they're simple enough for young people to understand, but as opposed to so much fantasy or comic book fiction, I really think all great stories, truly great stories are about moral ambiguity. And that's the heart of the story, is moral ambiguity. It's like, how do you be a good person in an impure world? And I love I don't know if you last summer I got to do a compendium of all drizzed diary entries.

Justin:

Yeah, I heard that.

Victor:

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

Oh wow.

Justin:

I haven't listened to it, but I wanted

Victor:

Yeah.

Justin:

to.

Victor:

Yeah, it was really fun. It was really, really cool. And at the same time, I did right around the same time I did the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. And it was similar.

Justin:

I was

Victor:

I mean,

Justin:

gonna say...

Victor:

it was very similar. Yeah.

Justin:

That's

Victor:

So

Justin:

so cool.

Victor:

So I love that people are getting, you know, like you say, Gerald Axel is such a great character because he's morally ambiguous.

Justin:

Yeah. And honestly, that is actually something I wanted to talk about because one of the things that really struck me about your voice acting style, specifically in the Drift books is in those diary entries, because it's one thing to just read a diary entry, but it's one thing to also kind of hear someone read it and, and really get, or feel like you get the emotion behind the entry, right? So, so how. And you mentioned this before with like heightened language and making it human. W what tips would you give to someone who is trying to really convey the deep emotion behind just the words they're saying, right?

Victor:

Good question. Well, let me go back to, so I do sometimes, I've done classes, audiobook classes for actors. And what I always start people out with is Shakespeare's sonnets. And, you know, there's a, there's a, this is sort of my motto as a writer is, Mark Twain said, the difference between the perfect word and the almost perfect word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. And so if you're reading really good fiction, you're really imbuing finding that. It's just, you know, you're, I mean, okay, let me back up. So one of the reasons I choose Shakespeare for people to work, start with, I do a sonnet and then we get into the books, is that the great fear that actors have with Shakespeare and with American actors is that it's gonna be boring. And the only way it's boring, because it's not boring material, the only way it's boring is to shy away from committing to the emotion of the moment. So it's if you commit to specifically what you're saying, this is not a general sort of wash of emotion. You've got to be specifically following the, so again, that's why classical training is so important for audio books, because what you're doing when you're narrating is you're helping the listener follow the thought. So you've got to really follow that thought. And these, again, like classical characters, they're passionate about their thoughts, these people. What they're thinking is passionate, whereas so often, and I think it's less true now, but for so often it's been we hide what we feel with our language, with the things we say. So you've got to be capable, you've got to be willing to look for what's the specific thing that's being conveyed with each word, and it becomes very natural, but just commit to a specific meaning word rather than a general and really just follow the thought moment to moment. Does that make sense?

Justin:

Yeah, so go

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

ahead Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

No, I just I love it because I've had the same experience. I saw some clips of what's the show called? It's in the actor's studio. What's that one

Victor:

Oh

Tanner Weyland:

called?

Victor:

yeah, yeah,

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah. Yeah,

Victor:

in the studio I think, yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

yeah, yeah. Thank you. And, you know, they have some actors who read Shakespeare. And I'm like, these guys are amazing, you know, and they do it so differently depending on who's portraying it. And it kind of does go to show what you were saying. It's like, hey, you have to commit to something, you know, and there's no necessarily right way to do it in at least

Victor:

Right.

Tanner Weyland:

in certain, you know, stories. Right. I think especially going to D&D and other kinds of places where we get the freedom to act, you know, so many players wait until the moment. is quote unquote worthy of having like emotion or like being passionate about. But it's like, Hey, before that during mundane things, you can choose to have. Emotions as well. Right. Even when you're buying an egg from the market or whatever else. Right.

Victor:

Yeah, because what's the, you know, sometimes you start as an actor, you start a scene. By asking yourself, what's the preceding moment? What happened before it started? Where is the character coming from? We're always bringing something into every moment. We're not, we very rarely arrive, unless you just came from a meditation, you very rarely arrive totally clean. You've brought something with you. And how does that affect what you're about to do? And again, I've never played D&D. Actually, I did do a book. about playing D&D two years ago, which is kind of fun.

Tanner Weyland:

That's fun.

Victor:

But it, you know, how much do people really explore? What's the point of view? What is the life experience of this character? And what's the point of view they're bringing with them? And that's what, and again, it's so much easier when you're working with good material, because that's what, you know, Bob's books, they're in... in a way they're formulaic, but still you know that ultimately these characters are going to survive, but he still puts you on the edge of your seat. Every time you're still worried when these characters are in jeopardy. That's just a fantastic skill and talent. And again, like I said, certain materials better for certain people. I love the questions that Drizzt

Tanner Weyland:

Thanks

Victor:

asks

Tanner Weyland:

for watching!

Victor:

himself. I mean, there are questions that I ask myself. Sometimes I just really can put myself in the moment and think that I'm Drizzt. So. But that's the key. And again, audio books are so much fun because you get to play all the characters. So you get

Justin:

Thanks

Victor:

to keep

Justin:

for watching!

Victor:

switching points of view. And nobody thinks they're a bad guy. Everybody thinks they're doing the best they can in the way that they understand the world. Even like Loaf or Matron Mets Barris or whoever. They all think they're doing the best they can. in the world that was given to them. And then you have the heroic characters like Drizzt who are willing to push out of the boundaries of the world they were given, question that. Maybe this is not the way it should be. And that's the hero's journey.

Justin:

Um, so if I've understood it's, it's not so much like acting as it is like...

Welcome back to How to be a Better DM. Today, I am Justin Lewis. I actually am

always Justin Lewis, but today I'm joined with Tanner Whelan. Go ahead and say

hi, Tanner.

Hey guys.

And we have today with us a very special guest, Victor Baveen. And for me, he's kind

of, he has a special place in my heart because I first got introduced to really anything

to do with Dungeons and Dragons by listening to the R.A. Salvatore books about

Dredd Stoerden. I listened to them on audiobook and the voice actor who really

personified, in my opinion, Drizztorodin was Victor Bavine. So having him here with

us is a real treat for me personally because, like I said, I have fond memories

of long road trips, listening to Drizzt battle the monsters of the Underdark and then

make his way to the surface and kind of go through a, you know, a similar trek I

think a lot of us go through when we're trying to find out who we are and where

we fit in life. Thank you for being here, Victor. And if you want to, you can add

to that introduction however you want. But thank you for being here.

Sure, my pleasure. I'm thrilled that I've been doing the Driz books for about 10

years now. And I think I'm up to 40 plus. I've done all but I think three of them.

And those were done before I got involved. And yeah, I've been an actor my whole life

and I'm also a writer and entrepreneur. started doing audiobooks about 17 years ago

and this was one of the first really big projects that I got. So, you know, I'm

thrilled. I'm thrilled the fans like it. I get a lot of really fun emails. In fact,

the best one I've ever, one of the best ones I've ever gotten, I don't want to

choose best, but this guy wrote me and said how... he was going blind actually,

and he was unable to read to his children anymore. And so they would listen to the DRISD

books as bedtime stories together. And it really brought a tear to my eye. So

I'm thrilled

Wow.

to be here, but I love the books, I'm thrilled to be here.

Awesome. Yeah. Having experiences like that has to be life changing because in,

you know, in accounting, you don't have the opportunity to change someone's life

like that. Right. So, uh, well, let's get into some of our questions. Uh, and, you

know, I thought one reason having you on the podcast would be so great is because

as people play Dungeons and Dragons, uh, one thing that a lot of people kind of

are drawn towards naturally is just kind of the the attempts at voice acting. And

I think it's a really great way to help your players become immersed. And so I

thought it would be a great, a great thing to have you on and kind of talk about

that. But you also mentioned that you're also a writer. So tell us a little bit

kind of how you got into voice acting and writing and kind of how those two interweave

and things like that.

Well, I pretty much always wanted to be an actor. I decided when I was five that

I wanted to be an actor because I saw this TV show. I wasn't allowed to have

a dog. I really wanted a dog and my mom wouldn't let me get a dog. And I saw this

TV show about vaudeville and there was this one dog act and I got into my head

that as an actor, I could have a dog.

Ha

And

ha.

so anyway, so I decided I always wanted to be an actor and then I always thought it

was, I love to read and I, you know, I just... Classically trained as an actor,

so I've done a lot of Shakespeare. So I think it really sets you up well for reading

large blocks of text and making it understandable, cuz that's the trick of being

a narrator is knowing how to use language, what we would call heightened language to.

to tell the story, but at the same time, keep it personal and human without getting

too involved in technique. So anyway, so I had been acting for years and I was living

in LA and toward the end of my time in LA, my manager asked me, how would you like

to read the Bible? And I said, okay. I was hired by this company to do, there were

like eight of us, and I read six books of the Old Testament, six books of the New.

And it was pretty cool, pretty cool way to make a living. And then I moved back

to New York and I actually bought this house in New Jersey, in Newark, for God

knows why I did it. Because I wanted

Hahaha

a project to renovate this, renovate this old historic home. And so I... I was in

the midst of doing that and it was right when Audible was moving to Newark, moving

their headquarters to Newark. And I happened to see an interview with the CEO

and the in the local paper and I got on the company website and I emailed him. I

figured out his email address. It was dcatz at audible.com.

Ha

And

ha.

so I just emailed. Thanks for taking a chance on Newark. I said I did the same thing.

I bought this house and my friend said I was crazy to move from Santa Monica

to Newark, but here I am and here's my voiceover demo. And I'd love to come in

for an audition. The CEO emailed me two days later and said, yeah, come in for

an audition. So that's how I got started to really do an audiobooks. And that was, gosh,

2007 or eight

Okay.

and I've done probably 350 books at this point and I'd always wanted to be a writer.

I'd been writing screenplays when I was in LA and almost got a couple of movies

off the ground and then I had a project that almost was super close. We had the money

and I'm almost in the bank and then the financial crisis hit and the money disappeared.

I was supposed to direct it and I'd written the screenplay and So it all fell apart

and I said, well, I've always wanted to write a novel, now's the time. So I wrote

the first draft of the novel and it was awful. It was basically the screenplay

without formatting and because I didn't know how to write fiction, it was right around

that time that I started narrating at Audible. And then two years later, I picked

up the novel again after having probably. narrated 40 books and I suddenly started writing

again. I said, oh I know how to write prose fiction now Because it was that was like

my 10,000 hours. It was all it was all there so that so it all did kind of meld

really nicely together and So that's sort of how I got to do all of it

Wow, I love that so much. That's man, what a roller coaster. Hot

Yeah.

dang. So

Yeah, it's the life of an artist.

did you find that you kind of naturally gravitated to narrating the fictional

books or was that purely coincidental that they were like, hey, you're great for

this?

It was just coincidental. I've done a lot of, like I just, my most recent book

I just finished last week was about the Russo-Ukrainian War. Very intense, deeply

historical. really dense. Normally, the process is generally a book called takes

about four or five days to record and then you come in for like an hour or two

of pickups, stuff that you got wrong and you have to go in and fix. And normally

the most I generally, I have anywhere between 20 and 50 pickups in a project when

I can knock that out in an hour. This we had 350 pickups. because the names, the

Ukrainian and Russian names, you know, they wanted them so specific and really perfect.

So, and then the longest book I've ever done, single book was a book called Gotham,

which is a Pulitzer Prize winning history of New York City. And it's two volumes

and it's 4,000 pages. And that took four months.

Wait,

And

so

that...

4,000, that many pages, how many hours is that? Like, it's gotta

It's

be

a

a lot.

60 hours, about 60 hours. Yeah,

Hot day.

yeah, it's a commitment. It's a great, it's a great book. I mean, it's a fantastic,

I mean, you know, and I love New York, I'm a native New Yorker and I love delving

into the history. And so it was fun. But then I loved doing the fantasy too. I loved

doing fiction and I mean, I've done some, you know, classic fiction like Vonnegut.

But... I'd done a couple of other fantasy series before I got the Drift. And

the Drift thing was, you know, it was interesting how it came to me. Cause they

had recorded a couple of the books, not starting from book one. And they had two

different narrators and everybody hated the narrators apparently. And so they,

Wizards of the Coast, came to Audible and they said, we need to find a new narrator.

So they did a contest where they recorded, they had three of us that Ari Salvador approved,

and then they put it on the fan website and the fans chose me.

Well, that's

53%

awesome.

of the fans chose me. So there was already like a lot of buy-in, you know? And

I still get, when people come to those other books, I get all these like Twitter messages

saying, what happened, where'd you go? Did they fire you?

Ha ha ha!

No, no, just be patient, I'll be back. But the

I'm

fun

sorry.

thing with the, so many of you were saying about character stuff, character voices,

the fun thing about... about fantasy is that you really can take liberties with

the voices. In general, they want you to be really subtle with characters and

like obviously in you know non-fiction stuff but even in fiction they want you to

be fairly subtle but you know you can just go crazy with the um I love some of

the voices that I've managed to create and it's fun funny because I won't tell you.

I will never reveal this, but Jarlaxle is one of my favorite voices that I created

and a lot of people love that voice. And one of the ways sometimes I'll create voices

is I'm so bad at celebrity impersonations that I'll

Hahaha

do a celebrity impersonation and it'll come out as a voice but nobody recognizes it.

I'm

And that's

sorry.

how Jarlaxle started. So he's based on a celebrity, but I will never tell you who

it is.

I'm gonna have to go back and listen and kind of play Celebrity Bingo and see, you

know, like process

Yeah,

of elimination.

I would love it if you guessed it, but I don't think you will. It's so bad.

That's amazing.

Yeah, and I do have to say Jarlaxle is, he's one of my favorite characters too.

He's complex, but he's also mysterious and kind of cheeky. And I think a lot of people

idealize that and wish they were like that in real life, right?

I think that the genius of Bob's books is that they're simple enough for young people

to understand, but as opposed to so much fantasy or comic book fiction, I really

think all great stories, truly great stories are about moral ambiguity. And that's

the heart of the story, is moral ambiguity. It's like, how do you be a good person in an

impure world? And I love I don't know if you last summer I got to do a compendium

of all drizzed diary entries.

Yeah, I heard that.

Yeah.

Oh wow.

I haven't listened to it, but I wanted

Yeah.

to.

Yeah, it was really fun. It was really, really cool. And at the same time, I did right

around the same time I did the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. And it was similar.

I was

I mean,

gonna say...

it was very similar. Yeah.

That's

So

so cool.

So I love that people are getting, you know, like you say, Gerald Axel is such

a great character because he's morally ambiguous.

Yeah. And honestly, that is actually something I wanted to talk about because one

of the things that really struck me about your voice acting style, specifically

in the Drift books is in those diary entries, because it's one thing to just read

a diary entry, but it's one thing to also kind of hear someone read it and, and

really get, or feel like you get the emotion behind the entry, right? So, so how.

And you mentioned this before with like heightened language and making it human.

W what tips would you give to someone who is trying to really convey the deep emotion

behind just the words they're saying, right?

Good question. Well, let me go back to, so I do sometimes, I've done classes, audiobook

classes for actors. And what I always start people out with is Shakespeare's sonnets.

And, you know, there's a, there's a, this is sort of my motto as a writer is,

Mark Twain said, the difference between the perfect word and the almost perfect word

is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. And so if you're reading

really good fiction, you're really imbuing finding that.

It's just, you know, you're, I mean, okay, let me back up. So one of the reasons

I choose Shakespeare for people to work, start with, I do a sonnet and then we

get into the books, is that the great fear that actors have with Shakespeare and

with American actors is that it's gonna be boring. And the only way it's boring,

because it's not boring material, the only way it's boring is to shy away from

committing to the emotion of the moment. So it's if you commit to specifically what

you're saying, this is not a general sort of wash of emotion. You've got to be specifically

following the, so again, that's why classical training is so important for audio

books, because what you're doing when you're narrating is you're helping the listener

follow the thought. So you've got to really follow that thought. And these, again,

like classical characters, they're passionate about their thoughts, these people.

What they're thinking is passionate, whereas so often, and I think it's less true

now, but for so often it's been we hide what we feel with our language, with the

things we say. So you've got to be capable, you've got to be willing to look for

what's the specific thing that's being conveyed with each word, and it becomes very

natural, but just commit to a specific meaning word rather than a general and really

just follow the thought moment to moment. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so go

Yeah.

ahead Tanner.

No, I just I love it because I've had the same experience. I saw some clips

of what's the show called? It's in the actor's studio. What's that one

Oh

called?

yeah, yeah,

Yeah. Yeah,

in the studio I think, yeah.

yeah, yeah. Thank you. And, you know, they have some actors who read Shakespeare.

And I'm like, these guys are amazing, you know, and they do it so differently

depending on who's portraying it. And it kind of does go to show what you

were saying. It's like, hey, you have to commit to something, you know,

and there's no necessarily right way to do it in at least

Right.

in certain, you know, stories. Right. I think especially going to D&D and

other kinds of places where we get the freedom to act, you know, so many

players wait until the moment. is quote unquote worthy of having like emotion

or like being passionate about. But it's like, Hey, before that during mundane

things, you can choose to have. Emotions as well. Right. Even when you're

buying an egg from the market or whatever else. Right.

Yeah, because what's the, you know, sometimes you start as an actor, you start

a scene. By asking yourself, what's the preceding moment? What happened before

it started? Where is the character coming from? We're always bringing something

into every moment. We're not, we very rarely arrive, unless you just came from a

meditation, you very rarely arrive totally clean. You've brought something with

you. And how does that affect what you're about to do? And again, I've never played

D&D. Actually, I did do a book. about playing D&D two years ago, which is kind of

fun.

That's fun.

But it, you know, how much do people really explore? What's the point of view? What

is the life experience of this character? And what's the point of view they're bringing

with them? And that's what, and again, it's so much easier when you're working with

good material, because that's what, you know, Bob's books, they're in... in a way

they're formulaic, but still you know that ultimately these characters are going

to survive, but he still puts you on the edge of your seat. Every time you're

still worried when these characters are in jeopardy. That's just a fantastic skill

and talent.

And again, like I said, certain materials better for certain people. I love the questions

that Drizzt

Thanks

asks

for watching!

himself. I mean, there are questions that I ask myself. Sometimes I just really

can put myself in the moment and think that I'm Drizzt. So. But that's the key. And

again, audio books are so much fun because you get to play all the characters.

So you get

Thanks

to keep

for watching!

switching points of view. And nobody thinks they're a bad guy. Everybody thinks

they're doing the best they can in the way that they understand the world. Even

like Loaf or Matron Mets Barris or whoever. They all think they're doing the best

they can. in the world that was given to them. And then you have the heroic characters

like Drizzt who are willing to push out of the boundaries of the world they were

given, question that. Maybe this is not the way it should be. And that's the hero's

journey.

Um, so if I've understood it's, it's not so much like acting as it is like adoption.

You're adopting the emotions that, you know, this character theoretically has.

Um, you use the word subtle, right? Like sometimes you have to be subtle. And I,

at least in the world of D&D, there are a lot of cliches, right? You know, you

have the dwarf who has the Scottish accent, right? Uh, things like that. And. I

think the word, the subtle word would be very useful for a lot of people out there

who might not feel like they can do, you know, the South African accent or, you

know what I mean. So what are some tips for kind of increasing the subtle differences

between characters so that way it's apparent that, you know, if I'm talking and

then I stop and then I talk again, you can tell it's two different people, right?

Yeah, so that's a great question. And one of the most obvious one is when you're

doing, when you're a guy and you're doing a girl's voice. Because you don't want

to go up like this because this is ridiculous. You know, it's like, nobody's going

to want to listen to that for half an hour and they're not going to take the conversation

seriously. So it's, you know, so you alter things subtly with tone, you know, with,

with. You know, so for women in particular, I'll basically soften the voice just a little

and make it a little bit higher. And maybe the place the confidence comes from is

a different place. It's less testosterone driven. And... And then sometimes you can also change the character

with the speed. Some characters talk really fast, or some characters talk really deep. With Dungeons & Dragons, it's easy,

because then if you're doing some sort of a bizarre creature from the underworld, you can really just take a liberty with that.

Yeah, so those are so it's tone, speed. And again, if you do like, like Jarlaxle, you

know, I just made a decision that this is what he was gonna sound like, you know,

and it's just sort of fits him. And that's still my voice, it's still clearly my

voice, but it's just a subtle shift so you can feel, you know, when a different

character is speaking. I mean, but generally, again, this is less about the game

and more about audio books, but the rule of thumb is when you're, the main character

in a book should be the closest to your own voice. And then the next closest to

your voice should be the narrator of the book. And then from there, you go off

depending if it's a really a tertiary, a secondary character, you want to keep it,

you know, pretty close to, you know, pretty subtle. But if it's, you start getting

into third level and fourth level characters where they really are kind of two

dimensional, you can give them more goofy, you know, voices. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, I really like it. You know, just obviously from a voice acting standpoint,

but even for D&D, I think some newer players, because this happens all

the time, people come into it and they think, hey, I need to come up with

a crazy voice initially. And it's like, hey, how about you play a character

who's actually very close to your normal voice, but you learn how to

imbue that with the emotion of the moment in what you're doing and how

you're playing the game. And then later on, you can change things up, you

know, that initial practice and especially for DMs you know the people

running the D&D game. It's okay to have more than you'd think of the characters

you're playing to sound like derivatives of your own voice because you can

still through tone, through speed, certain things make them unique. Yeah

I really like that.

And the other thing is, you know, it's kind of a mistake to really emphasize

emotion, because that's a result. When you're taught as an actor, you're taught

really more about how do you connect with the process, so that you're not going

for something that you've predetermined, and you're trying to sound like what you already

thought about earlier. So basically, the things you think about in a scene is, what

does my character want? What are they after? Really commit to that. I don't know

if you ever watch I Love Lucy, old reruns of I Love Lucy. Well, just, anyway,

I'll forget about that. But you commit to what you want, and then basically there

are always obstacles to getting what we want. And oftentimes it's another character

or it's a... physical, some sort of physical difficulty or a journey that you have

to go on. And so what we do as human beings is we go after what we want. We try

something. It doesn't work. We try something else. So it's about, it's about pursuing

what you want and then what are your strategies for getting it. So sometimes the

strategy will be yelling at somebody and demanding it. Other times it'll be manipulating

them and it can be the same words, but it's just, it's a matter of what are the

different strategies. If I haven't gotten what I want, what am I trying now? And

that's what's going to create more of an organic, real feeling to it, because

that's what we do in life.

Yeah, that's great.

That's super interesting to me because I don't think I've ever thought about My characters

having strategies, you know, especially even the characters that are kind of bit players

They come in for like five minutes and then you know, we move to whatever else

the players are doing So with that and obviously with you know, the Shakespeare

sonnets are there any Specific things or even general things that you recommend to

someone? to practice kind of voice acting, I guess.

I don't know how to practice.

Well, I don't know if this is going to mean anything to you guys, but when we work

on the sonnets, I always tell people, I always tell, listen to Frank Sinatra. and

listen to the way he uses emphasis to change, you know, in the course of the song,

he stays within, and it's again, it's specific to sonnets and Shakespeare because

Shakespeare is generally written in iambic pentameter, so you have a meter that

you have to adhere to, but you can take liberties within that. So you know, it's

the same thing with Sinatra. Sinatra stays in, he stays in the, what do you call

it? the rhythm of the line. And I forgot, I'm losing the, losing the word, but

he stays within the rhythm, but he also takes liberties. So it's, you know, in

terms of other things.

I would just say just be conscious of, start being conscious and mindful of how

you approach things in life. Yourself and watch how you, when you're after something,

what are your strategies? How do you go from one thing to another? What are your

patterns of approaching situations? And you know, somebody may have, depending

on how they were raised, which one will they go for first? Some of them may go

for, maybe they're a bully and they'll go, the first one is gonna be trying to just

get it by force. Maybe they were disempowered as children and so they're gonna have to go

by manipulation or they're gonna have to be a supplicant or they're gonna, it depends

on, so it's what's the backstory of your character and you can usually imply that

from what, where someone is now in their life, you can sort of create a backstory

and say, okay, I can see where this would go. And then, but then, you know, you

still got the supplicant who occasionally is going to get angry and, you know, demand

stuff, they're pushed to a certain place. So it's just a matter of how determined,

how determined are you to get what you want?

I wouldn't worry about, you know, the sound of the voices and all that stuff

is almost secondary. The most important thing is grounding it into any kind of reality,

especially when you're doing D&D because I'm imagining it's mostly improv. You're not

really given a script, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So in improv, if you can really, you know, there's a great book called...

by Viola Spolin, and it's a book on improvisation. Famous, it's a seminal book

on improvisation. I forget the name of it, but you look it up, Improvisation by

Viola Spolin. And that would be a great, you know, improvisation class would

be a great thing for people who are doing D&D. Because it's, you know, and again,

the trick to improvisation is the basic rule is you never say no. So somebody

does something, you don't say, no, that sucks, I'm going to do something else.

You go with what they've brought to it, and then you build on that.

You don't have to internally say, no, that doesn't. It's like brainstorming.

You've got to keep the ball moving forward on the court. So if someone brings

one thing, OK, how can I use that? I think that would be probably the most useful

thing is an improv class. And there are some great basic exercises in the Viola

Spollen book on improvs.

Man, that's wonderful, honestly. I really like, I don't know, I think we came

into this with certain questions and you just answered like most of them without

us even having

Okay.

to ask. I'm just gonna throw that out there. One last one that I kind of

have is, I think if people aren't grounding, well, let me switch up how

I ask this. I think it's very easy for people to feel like they don't need

to ground a character in reality because they're like, oh, it's a bit player.

It can be a caricature for a joke. Does that hurt the story at all or

is there a place for that?

So there are two ways that I'll answer that question. One, I'm gonna go back to I

Love Lucy. So I Love Lucy was a really silly sitcom from the 50s. And you know, she

was, Lucille Ball was a, she was a mainstream actress. I mean, she was a bathing

beauty and she was in a lot of dramatic roles and she became this, she wasn't that

funny a person in real life, but she became this kind of queen of comedy. And the

way that stuff is funny, it's because it's the most ridiculous situations, but she

commits to it 150%. Like the terror that Ricky is gonna find out she bought a new

hat. And she commits to that 150%. And that's what makes it funny. And then going

back to Shakespeare, I don't know if you ever read Hamlet. So Hamlet's got these

two. There's two big players in Hamlet named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And um.

They're like his friends from college who come visit and they're sort of the butt

of a lot of jokes in the course of the book, of course of the play. And they don't

have a lot to say and they're famously drab as characters. Well, there was a book

that I think was Tom Stoppard, by the way, a play that Tom Stoppard wrote in

the 60s, a British playwright, called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. And

it's basically the Hamlet, the entire play from the perspective Guildenstern. So

they're the main characters. So you know, everything, yes, you know, it depends.

If you're a writer too, sometimes you'll put in a two-dimensional character just

for comic relief. But even if it's comedy, what makes it funnier, really grounding

the comedy, is that that character committing to something that is ridiculous.

And that's what's going to elevate the comedy rather than... rather than making

a joke of it, you just commit to something outlandish and it's gonna be funnier. Does

that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense.

Yeah, I have to say, I am very surprised and pleasantly so that, you know, I came in

thinking we were going to talk about voice acting and we did, but we talked about

really the skills behind voice acting, which is, you know, like you said, committing

and grounding it in a sort of reality. I love that phrase, you know, because D&D,

you know, one thing we always strive for in D&D is that immersion. And if you can

bring parts of reality into it, it creates anchor points to reality and it makes

it all feel more real, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's just gonna be more exciting for everybody if people, and the more,

and it becomes contagious because the more one character commits to reality,

the more real it becomes for other people. And you'll go deeper and deeper into

a, you know, a really powerful experience.

Exactly. Well, Victor, I think we're actually coming up on the time we've allotted

ourselves. So thank you so much. I can't believe it went that fast, but thank

you so much for joining us.

My

Yeah,

pleasure.

Yeah, honestly.

usually before we end, we all give everyone kind of a like a last minute like

here, listener, this is the last thing I'd like to say. So I'll start and then Tanner

can go and then Victor, if you'd like to share one last thing. Listener, I would

just recommend with your voice playing or voice acting in your games. The biggest

thing I would probably say is try and make the characters real from a sense of

what are they thinking about, what do they care about, you know, even if they're

a shopkeeper in some tavern or something, like think about why they're there and what

they want out of any situation. I think that'll take you a long way.

And kind of spinning off on that, I think we sweat the small stuff too

often, and that's what I've realized here. Like, you know, you don't have

to get the perfect voice that you were imagining for a character. That's

not what's gonna sell it. I mean, you could do a very bad Christopher

Walken impression, and that could be a voice. That's fine. No one's

Yeah.

gonna judge you for that, because they don't know who you were trying

to do. What will break it for them is if you're not fully committed and

if you haven't grounded it in reality. So, yeah.

And sort of going on what both of you said, the great fear of any kind of performing

is that you're going to be humiliated and people are going to judge you. And the

more you commit to an objective and you involve yourself in an act, look a bit

more of as an activity, that you're after something and you're committed to that,

the less time you will have to think about what other people are thinking about

you.

and the more powerful the experience will be.

I love it.

Mic drop. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here with us, Victor.

Nice

Before

guy.

we let you go, how can people reach out to you, support you, see what you're up

to, and follow you?

You can follow me on Twitter, it's at VictorBaveen. Instagram, I have a pretty

active Instagram page. Also on Facebook, VictorBaveen. And VictorBaveen.com, if anyone

is out there and has a book that they, you know, I've had a lot of independent authors

have reached out to me to narrate their books, because they know that I, you

know, people when they finish the drizz, they'll say, what should I listen to

now? And so I've worked with a lot of independent authors. So, yeah, I'm out there.

Thank you.

Awesome,

Perfect.

awesome. Well, listener, we'll be back next week for another amazing episode.

Until then, let's go ahead and roll initiative. Awesome. We're gonna keep recording

just because my brother is, well, he doesn't have any questions. Awesome, so

I think that's it. Like I said, this should be coming out in about two weeks, and

we'll let you know and send you all the links and everything. But again, thank

you so much, Victor. This was amazing.

My pleasure, it was fun guys.

Yeah,

Yeah,

you

Okay,

thank

take

you

care.

so much.

okay, have a great weekend.

See y'all,

Hey, you too.