You're listening to Voice Acting Mastery, episode number 89.

Welcome to the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with Crispin Freeman.

Voiceactingmastery.com is your place to learn both the skills and the mindset you need to become a professional voice actor, even if you're just getting started.

In each episode of this podcast, you'll discover valuable tips, tricks and insider information

to help you portray characters in animation, video games and beyond.

And now here's your host, voice actor Crispin Freeman.

Hi there, my name is Crispin Freeman, and I'll be your guide through the world of voice acting.

If you'd like to know more about me, feel free to check up my personal website at www.com.

In this episode, I'd like to talk about a skill that is crucial to becoming a better voice

actor. Critical listening. I touched on this topic briefly in my interview with Edward

Bosco and Kim Lynn Tran back in episodes 33 through 35 of the podcast. When I asked Kim Lin what

advice she would give to aspiring voice actors,

she explained that the best thing they could do is to develop their critical listening skills.

I agreed. If you're going to pursue voice acting professionally, you need to be able to listen

to an actor's performance, understand what acting choices they made,

and then decide whether or not those acting decisions are the best ones to serve the character and the

story. Until you develop the ability to listen to performances critically in both other

actors' work and in your own acting, you won't know what you need to do to improve your

performances. So let's spend this episode talking about what it takes to develop your critical

listening skills. And now, the feature segment. The vast majority of people watch their

entertainment passively.

They enjoy certain stories and certain actors' performances, but they may never take the time to stop and ask why.

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