Interview: voice-over animation artist Bob Bergen, coming to Dallas in October

by John P. Meyer

Suppose you grew up listening to Mel Blanc doing Porky Pig (ba DEyah, ba DEyah) and discovering - at the ripe old age of five - that you could do him passably well, too. (Porky, that is.)

Suppose further that you made it your life's ambition to actually BE Porky Pig - in the sense of doing his voice for Warner Brothers. And then suppose that - at the riper, older age of 26 - you achieved that dream.

Where would you go from there?

Well, if you were Bob Bergen you'd find yourself talking on the phone one sunny morning in late September to some guy at Pegasus News, trying your level best to answer the insightful questions being hurled at you relentlessly, one after another. And sounding really good answering them.

At a less mundane level, you'd find yourself preparing to spend two days in Dallas (Oct. 11 & 12) sharing your expertise with a classroom full of students eager to learn all you could tell them about getting started - and then prospering - in the voice-over animation business.

Bob lives and works in Southern California, center of the animation industry, where he's established himself as a "go-to guy" when it comes to voicing cartoon characters. He's lately been involved in Shrek 2, Wall-E and Horton Hears a Who, among lots of others, and he's working on new movies for Pixar and Disney. You might say he's at the top of his form, the head of his class; he's the cat's meow, as long as that cat is Sylvester.

In advance of his Dallas workshop appearance (and a potential local performance of his one-man show, Bob Bergen: So Here's the Deal), we conversed with Bob for the better part of twenty minutes. Will you find our conversation interesting? Who knows? It's heavily dependent upon whether you brush with Pepsodent or Crest. (For those who don't brush at all, just move on along, nothing to see here...)

To help you decide whether the audio interview is worth your valuable listening time, I've provided topical highlights below - and to make the medicine go down that much easier, I've split the file into two digestible segments of roughly eight (part 1) and nine (part 2) minutes each.

PART 1

* Bob's early affinity for Porky Pig

* How he studied the Porker's voice using a variable-speed tape recorder

* The state of the voice-over animation industry today, as opposed to the way it was when Mel Blanc ruled the cartoon jungle

* Thrill to Bob's (German-inflected) alien-from-another-planet character, created for a Cartoon Network audition

* "The nice thing about a (new) cartoon is you can't make a wrong choice - it's not been created yet."

* "By auditioning you're basically talking them into loving you."

* Learn more than you ever expected to know about the voice-over industry, and hear Bob deliver the yin/yang assessment: "because of technology, the business is growing - but because of technology, there's more competition."

PART 2

* discover that you've gotta be a good businessperson in addition to being talented

* "There's no such thing as a good voice, because there's no such thing as a bad voice."

* It's all about acting, really

* Find out how long it takes Bob to apply his makeup prior to a voice-over session.

* Hear Bob's #1 piece of advice to those wanting to break into the voice-over industry.: (HINT: it's all about acting, really)

* "Improv, I think, is the greatest training in the world because it takes you out of your head."

* "One bad demo ruins an entire career."

* "Be patient, study, and be ready - and you'll know when you're ready. If you're wavering - 'I'm not sure.' - you're not ready."

* Discover what you stand to learn by attending Bob's weekend workshop

* "They will leave with a taste of 'this is what the business is about,' and after that it's up to them."

Bob's weekend workshop will be held at CakeMix Recording in Dallas. The cost to participate is $525, which includes lunch both days. Contact Marian Massaro (marian@marianmassaro.com) to reserve a seat - they're filling up fast.

That's all, folks!

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