Raise Your Voice Acting

Buzz, Reviews & Interviews

March 28th, 2012

We had a fun interview with 411mania – here is a bit of it, but click on the link to read more!

411mania interview: Tara Platt and Yuri Lowenthal

411mania.com speaks with the husband and wife team of Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt to talk about their work on Ben 10, their new live web series Shelf Life, their co-authored book, and much more.

During the 2012 WonderCon, I got to catch up with actors Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt. Recently the husband and wife team had their own co-authored book published, Voice-Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind The Mic. Yuri is most known for his work on the hit Ben 10 franchise as the older, teenaged voice of hero, Ben Tennyson in the Ultimate Alien and Alien Force renditions of the show and the soon to be premiering series, Ben 10: Omniverse. Yuri has also done work on the hit Prince of Persia videogame series as the titular Prince, the Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden anime shows as everyone’s favorite dark antihero Sasuke Uchiha, Iceman in Wolverine and The X-Men, Superman in Legion of Super Heroes, and Shinra Kishitani in the awesome Durarara!! Tara Platt has also worked on the Naruto franchise as the Sand ninja and sister of Gaara, Temari, rogue Shinigami Lisa Yadomaru in the Bleach series, Tokiko Tsumura in a personal favorite series of mine Buso Renkin (“I’ll splatter your guts!”), and also as Jennifer Nocturne in the Ben 10 series. Now the two are currently working on their own live web series, Shelf Life, of which they came to the convention dressed as their characters from the show, Bug Boy and Hero Lass respectively.

Jeffrey Harris: So what are you guys excited about at WonderCon right now?

Yuri Lowenthal: I just love walking the floor and running into the people, technically I work with, but never get to see.

Tara Platt: I also just love seeing artist alley too. There’s something so exciting about what’s the new stuff being created and generated. That always excites me.

Jeffrey Harris: The Shelf Life series is outrageous and you work with some other great talent like Travis Willingham and Dee Bradley Baker. What was the conception of this idea?

Yuri Lowenthal: Strangely enough, even though I’m the resident nerd of the family, it was Tara’s idea.

Tara Platt: I know.

Yuri Lowenthal: She saw the action figures up in my office and spawned the idea and then ran with it. And luckily we surrounded ourselves with really talented, trustworthy people from working in this business for so many years. And they were on the boat too. They were like, “Oh it sounds great! Let’s do it!”

READ MORE

Interview with Voice Actor, Tara Platt! Big Damn Geeks

August 9th, 2011

Interview with Voice Actor, Tara Platt!

July 6th, 2011 FROM: BigDamnGeeks.com

You might not recognize her face but her voice will jog your memory! Tara Platt is an amazing voice actor whose worked on shows like Naruto and Ben 10, films like the upcoming Tekken: Blood Vengeance and video games like Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and Marvel vs Capcom 3. Aside from her work in animation, Tara Platt is an accomplished stage actress who’s played the title role in Romeo and Juliet and as Titania in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. She’s worked multiple times in shows written and directed by Star Trek: TNG’s John De Lancie. In 2004, she and her husband Yuri Lowenthal created Monkey Kingdom Productions, an independent film company and they also co-wrote a book on Voice Acting called Voice-Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind The Mic.

You started acting at a very young age, but when did you first get into doing voice work for animation?

The acting that I did when I was younger was all stage, I didn’t get into film or TV until after college, and then I didn’t start working in VO (animation, video games, etc.) until moving to LA in my early 20′s. So although I’ve been acting for much of my life, the VO part has been the latest “medium” to play in… Read the entire article

A great review for our book! Voice Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic

October 28th, 2010

From: PlaybackSTL.com:

Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt/ Voice Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic

Even if you have no aspirations towards a career in voice-over, there’s a lot you can learn from this book.

256 pages. Emerald Book Company, 2010. $19.95 (paperback)

Everyone knows about the kind of acting where you actually see people doing stuff: Hilary Swank doggedly pursuing evidence to free her brother from jail or Jeremy Renner disabling IEDs in Iraq. But there’s a whole other world of acting out there where the actor’s only tool is his/her voice. Not surprisingly this is called voice-over, and once you become aware of it, you will notice it everywhere: not only on the radio but also in commercials, live and animated film, television programs, video games, and recorded announcements. Basically, if you hear a voice and can’t see the person who is speaking, that’s voice-over.

Voice-Over Voice Actor: What It’s Like Behind the Mic, written by industry professionals Yuri Lowenthal and Tara Platt, provides an insiders’ view of the business of voice-over acting with a particular focus on actors who want to break into this market. Between them they have over 12 years of voice-over experience with clients including Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Dell, Coke and Subaru. Yuri is, among other things, the voice of the Prince of Persia in the video game series of the same name, Superman and Superman X on Legion of Superheroes, Ben Tennyson on Ben 10: Alien Force and Jinro/Kuma on Afro Samurai while Tara’s roles include Temari in Naruto (series and video games), Wonder Woman in DC vs. MK and Dream Girl in Legion of Superheroes.

They take a systematic approach to their topic, beginning with a description of the industry then moving through the practical processes of finding your voice, auditioning, creating a demo, building a home recording booth, marketing yourself, and actually doing the work. What I like best about this book is the informal yet business-like tone taken by the authors: they don’t offer shortcuts or “secrets to success” but point the way down a path which can lead to a rewarding career. And they’re not afraid to have some fun in the process: anecdotes, cartoons and fun facts are salted throughout the text, along with sidebars from other industry professionals which offer advice, war stories and other information about working in the voice-over business.

If you think you know something about voice acting (and even more so if you think it’s easier or somehow a lesser skill in comparison to conventional acting) I invite you to listen to the demo reels of Yuri (http://www.yurilowenthal.com/page4.html) and Tara (http://www.taraplatt.com/vo.html). Pretty amazing, huh? Not only do these demo reels demonstrate the versatility of these two actors, they also provide examples of how to assemble clips to showcase your talents briefly and effectively.

Even if you have no aspirations towards a career in voice-over, there’s a lot you can learn from this book. For instance, understanding the process by which anime dubs are created goes a long way toward explaining why you’re usually better off listening to the original soundtrack with subtitles. When animated films are first made, the dialogue is recorded and the animation is made to match the voices. Creating a dub reverses the process: the voice-over actor has to create a convincing performance while trying to match the mouth movements (flaps) of an animated character (who is “speaking” in a different language) while alone in the studio (generally each character is recorded separately) and working with little chunks (loops) of dialogue. That’s a tough gig any way you look at it.

You can learn more about Voice-Over Voice Actor from the book’s web site (http://voiceovervoiceactor.com/) which also offers bonus materials like exercises to improve your skills. You can also purchase the book from this web site and from online sources such as amazon.com. | Sarah Boslaugh

Go to PlaybackSTL

VOVA on Lulu

September 29th, 2010

The book is now available as an eBook for anyone who loves to read on the go! Simply visit Voice-Over Voice Actor on Lulu to buy your copy now. The eBook is the entire paperback version in a handy electronic delivery! Enjoy! But if you’d prefer to hold a book you can still pick up a copy at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Samuel French, Drama Book Shop and our website (where you can also get autographed copies).

Award Winning Voice-Over Voice Actor!

May 17th, 2010

We’ve just won two awards for VOVA.

We are so proud of our recent 2010 NABE Pinnacle Book Award for Voice-Over Voice Actor for “How To.“ The North American Bookdealers Exchange offer Pinnacle Awards for independent publishers throughout the US who present outstanding achievement in various categories.

We’re also extremely proud of our Winning Award in the “Young-Adult Educational” category of th IndieExcellenceAwardWinnerSticker e 2010 National Indie Excellence Awards. The NIEA award finalists and winners in various categories for independently published books, so we’re quite pleased to be the Winning book in our category.

Getting an award is always both flattering and appreciated, since it’s always nice to know others think highly of whatever you’ve spent such time & energy working on. Go VOVA!!