Rebecca Sands Coutts

Rebecca Sands Coutts is the Post Audio and Studio Manager at Warner Brothers, Discovery and Cartoon Network. More than twenty-five years of media and communications experience in film, commercials, radio, podcasting, print, multi-media and social media. Her unique mix of creative, production, public relations and technology experience gives her an expansive knowledge base to draw from when helping clients in both traditional media as well as social media and non-traditional approaches. Rebecca sits down with Malcolm to discuss how creativity affects her work and personal life.

Topics include; Cartoon Network, Discovery, Warner Brothers, Chris Diamantopoulos, Mark Hamill, Maurice LaMarche and Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal.

Recorded in Burbank June 2026 at Second Century; Warner Bros.’ new headquarters.

Please visit-
Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal

*This interview took place at the very beginning of the Boyle Heights Warehouse Fire in Loas Angeles, CA. The inferno began shortly before 2:30 p.m. on June 17, unbeknownst to the green-eyed CITC showrunner. This accounts for Rebecca and Malcolm both displaying super scratchy voices and sporadic coughing fits.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Alright, we are back. This is Creativity is the Cure. I'm your host, Malcolm Moore, and today I have my good friend Rebecca Sands Coots. How are you doing, Becca?

SPEAKER_04 0:36

I'm good. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

I'm great. We are here in, let's call it, Smoky Burbank.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Smokey Burbank.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Our voices are a little gravel. We don't know why, but it's very smoky outside. Alright, so for people who don't know who Becca is and what she does, she is a post audio and studio manager at Warner Brothers Discovery and Cartoon Network. More than 25 years of media and communications experience in film, commercials, radio, podcasting, print, multimedia, and social media. Her unique mix of creative, production, public relations, and technology experience gives her an expansive knowledge base to draw from when helping clients in both traditional media as well as social media and non-traditional approaches.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

I sound so impressive.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Yes. I was trying to figure out if I grabbed that online. I didn't know if it was grammatically correct, but I think it's okay. You just gave me a great tour of the Warner Brothers lot. And what is this called? Where we are?

SPEAKER_04 1:38

This is second century. It's the brand new Frank Geary building that got built during COVID. It's uh like a big we call it the iceberg often. You see it from the highway, you come up through, and it's just this weird, yeah, non-symmetrical glass building that grows out of the ground.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

It looks like the Fortress of Solitude.

SPEAKER_04 1:54

It it and we have Fortress of Solitudes all through the building.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

I was gonna say you guys have DC, so how perfect.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

We have these little Fortress of Solitudes that you can lock the door because most of the place in here you can't.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

All right, so that was a very exotic explanation of what you do, and I still don't understand it. So could you explain to me in two or three sentences what is it that you do here on a typical day?

SPEAKER_04 2:17

So what I do in Warner Brothers is I oversee all things sound for animation. That is what I do. So we have an in in internal studio which we run. Um, and that is for mainly our voice actors for animation come in here and they record all the voices.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Is that where we are right now?

SPEAKER_04 2:35

That is where we are sitting currently. Wow. So we every pretty much every single show we work on for Warner Brothers, for Cartoon Network, for Hannah Barbera come through us. And most of them have people who record right in here.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

So are you in charge of bringing the talent in or choosing the voices, or are you in charge of them once they're here?

SPEAKER_04 2:55

I'm in charge of them once they're here, getting them here, having them record, and then I'm in charge of their voice after. So once we record it, it goes to our dialogue people and our ADR people. And I oversee all of those people as well, making sure that everything is cut, tipped, top, tailed, sent over, and into the mix. We also deal with other studios and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Right. Yeah, and we were discussing earlier that sometimes you do the voices here, sometimes people have studios at home that they work with. Where do you draw the line and is it going to be done here or at their home studio?

SPEAKER_04 3:29

Uh, I mean, we vet everybody. So I started with Warner Brothers during COVID because they needed someone who was able to actually help people figure out how to set up studios in their closet. Yeah. There were all these poor actors that were surrounded by equipment that they had no desire nor knowledge to use. Uh, and I was the friendly voice on the other side of Zoom telling them how to hook up a microphone to an interface, how to use their, you know, cushions to good advantage to make them sound like they're sitting in a studio and walk them through all of that. So we have a pretty through COVID, we have a pretty extensive list of how we vet people.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

So even today, when we have a new person who wants to record at home, there's a specific list of things that I do with them to make sure that they actually can to the level that we need to. Because everyone's got to sound the same, whether you record in this studio at home. We have to have you sound like you're standing in the same room, but we can only do some of it. If you're standing in something that sounds like a music hall and the other person is standing in a music studio like this that sounds just beautifully dead, it's never going to quite go together.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Right. All right. So let's say how we know each other really quickly. The biggest common denominator is a school system called Larchemont Charter Schools.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Ah, Larchemont Charter.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

I taught there for 12 years, and I know all three of your kids, and currently I still teach two of them, and sometimes you, right?

SPEAKER_04 4:55

And sometimes me.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

A lot of good drummers. I was wondering where all the drumming came from, and it's absolutely you.

SPEAKER_04 5:01

Yeah, yeah. I was a drummer from the time I was in sixth grade. And that was because my mom wouldn't let me take up the saxophone. I already played the piano and the violin, and I wanted to play in band too, and I went to play saxophone, and she said that was too expensive. And so one day we were driving home from practice, and I told my dad again that I wanted to play in band. And my dad said, Well, what do you already do? And I said, Well, I play keyboards, and I, you know, and he's like, Oh, well, that's that's like mallets. You could you could do mallet, you should maybe take up the drums.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

So you did percussion first.

SPEAKER_04 5:29

So I took up the drums, and then my mom ended up buying me a drum set and a vibrophone and uh and here we are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

We also have two mutual friends, Chris Diamantopoulos and Maurice Lamarche, who you've done some work with, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:42

I have worked with both of them, yeah. They have been on several of our shows, I believe, for both of them.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

They're two of the best voice actors out there, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:49

They are fantastic. We love our voice actors. Working in this field is so wonderful because everyone comes here just happy and grateful for the for being in this place. I mean, we get to make funny voices all day long for a living. It's it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Must be a lot of laughing.

SPEAKER_04 6:04

It's so it's yes, it's so much laughing, it's so much fun, and it's so relaxed. Like you come in, you do these things, and then you go, and no one is the wiser. Like you can be on a million shows and no one knows who you are, but you get to do all this creative out, but it's great.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

And it's a fun place here. There's all kinds of crazy artifacts and paintings and Lego sculptures. We just walked by spy versus spy, one of my favorite things I used to read in books and magazines back in the day.

SPEAKER_04 6:32

Made entirely of Lego. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

So before we get deep into what you do, if it's okay with you, I would like to go back in time to when you were a little girl. And I would like to know what is your first creative memory.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

Oh man. I mean, I think I walked out of the womb creative. I don't actually have a first memory. I do remember writing music when I was in first grade or something. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

And how did you write it on piano or?

SPEAKER_04 7:13

On piano, on like little, you know, lined paper for music and you actually did the notation. Yeah. I've been able to read and read music since I can remember. My whole family is very musical, and we used to sing in full part harmony in our pew at church.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Wow, at the dinner table sometimes?

SPEAKER_04 7:37

Yeah, the the dysfunctional Von Traps is what I like to call us. Um Yeah. So we all so I have been able to read music forever. I can't even remember not being able to. Um so I remember doing creative drawing, music, all that stuff since since I have memories.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

So when you came up with the song, you would notate it and that's how you remembered it, or would you sometimes record it?

SPEAKER_04 8:00

N at the time, I don't want to date myself, but uh recording yourself was not such an easy proposition there. Yeah, I could record on cassette, but it was not something I did so much because my family, the piano was in the middle of life in my family.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:19

I do it's funny because I remember being a kid and writing things on paper and literally wishing that I could just press the keys down and maybe it would record directly onto a computer, and then maybe I could then do that in a different sound. And I remember wishing that that were a thing, and then turning around just about my high school years and realizing that that existed, that that was now a thing we could do, and I could now just make compositions. And I did do that. I played with composition through high school, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

And then so that must really help when you're doing a session here. And do they ever notate the singing parts and they have to read while they're recording, and then you understand?

SPEAKER_04 9:05

They do. They it's funny because uh you'll have a mix of people, right? There'll be people who completely read music and then people who don't at all.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:13

And the difference in how they learn enabler to perform it is wildly different. It's really helpful for we have people who come here who are the voice directors specifically for the songs. So they'll come in here for the composers and they'll just voice direct for that. And they have to be able to coach people who know music and who have absolutely no knowledge of music the same way and get the same timing performance out of them. It's it's wild. I would never appreciated the ability to read music until I started realizing some of these people trying to perform at this level with no knowledge of how to read music. It's like a foreign language.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yeah, you never know. I mean, people are different learners, and I was lucky enough to meet Buddy Rich when I was younger, very young. Probably the best drummer that ever lived. But what most people don't know is he couldn't read at all. So there was someone else in the band who would, when there was a new chart, go through it, but he had like a phonographic memory. He would just kill it and play it perfectly back.

SPEAKER_04 10:13

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

So everybody has a different approach, you know? It's not that one's right and one's wrong, but you're right. If you can read your opportunities are a lot more.

SPEAKER_04 10:22

Absolutely. I have a I don't know if I'm a cautionary tale or if I'm a or if I'm an inspiring one. It depends on who you talk to. I have such a varied background and I kind of jumped around all over the place my whole life. So as a kid, I did music and all that sort of thing and really enjoyed it, and then I went to the theater in university, much to my parents' chagrin, who they thought I would go in for music. And instead I went into theater and double majored in Jewish history and civilization. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Those are two slightly different topics.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

Yeah. Yeah. My grandmother later asked me what I was gonna do with my majors, and I said, I guess someday I'm gonna work for Spielberg, and I I nailed that. I nailed it. I worked for Anomaniacs. I was dealing with it. Not bad. Yeah. She's proud of me, I'm sure. But uh, but yeah, it's all those experiences are vastly different. So if you look at my resume, it makes no sense. But then when you actually do a job like this, where you need to have a tech background and an editing background and a music background, and be able to talk to people, it suddenly comes together and makes makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Being versatile really helps. It sounds like you grew up in a very creative environment. What were your parents like? How were they creative? What did they do for a living?

SPEAKER_04 11:36

My father was a database administrator, so computer guy, but my father played every brass instrument except for the French horn. My brother played clarinet, my mother sang opera, and then we all sang. We all sang in choirs. Wow. So yeah, there was a lot of music in my household. And there was always class my mother was playing classical music at all times of the day and night over the speakers in the house. So yeah, we were born and raised steeped in music.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

And you still do some of that now at church? You said you play drums and you arrange singing parts?

SPEAKER_04 12:12

Yeah, I still do. That's the main outlet that I found in the meanwhile.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:17

And every once in a while I still will um compose, score someone's film or show every once in a while.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

That is really cool. Can you tell me one of them that you did?

SPEAKER_04 12:29

Oh, I did this really fun like interstitials series in Canada in between shows, right? We would do this running show joke. And we did this one based on um Indiana Jones.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 12:42

And so I got to sort of I got to imitate some of the uh some of the music from Indiana Jones to these different pieces where he's going through these races or escaping from the bad guys, or it was so much fun. It was such a blast.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Do you just notate it and bring it in, or do you have like a computer programming? Oh no, I compose it.

SPEAKER_04 13:04

Yeah, yeah. I compose on logic mainly.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:07

I can create an entire orchestra.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:10

An entire score and orchestra through that. For something like a kid's show like that, it's good enough.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

That's so cool that you understand all that stuff. So when you're delegating and working here, you understand what everybody's doing.

SPEAKER_04 13:22

Yeah, for the most part. That's helpful. Just enough to get me in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Here's a very serious question. Do you think creativity could be implemented in curing people or at least helping people with mental health struggles like depression, anxiety? Any specific insight?

SPEAKER_04 13:43

I mean, I have friends who do that. That's a that's a profession. It's a profession. It's uh what they call it. Um I'm trying to remember what the name is, but they basically take art into institutions and help people create to get around their own blocks. Yeah. So yeah, there's a whole there's a whole thing. Are you thinking of a career change over there?

SPEAKER_02 14:06

I'm like you have done a little bit of everything too. How did you get your start in the entertainment business? Did you learn anything at college that helps you here today as well?

SPEAKER_04 14:17

Did I learn anything at college that helped me? Well, sure. I mean, so I went to, again, I had the weird double major of theater and Jewish history. I studied theater with practical aesthetics, which uh became the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School, which was Mammoth and Macy. So two famous guys. Their whole belief system was basically you show up on time, you know your lines, and you do them. Then you'll be a working actor. That was their their whole shtick. And they were right. They're absolutely, absolutely correct. Um but the fun thing about the fun thing about my history there was that I got to just meet all these people who then did widely ranging professions.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

So some of them stayed in the theater, some of them moved on to film, some of them went on to do politics or um PR or become doctors and other wild crazy things. But we all came from this background where we're laying on the floor riding around, pretending that we're, you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Improvising.

SPEAKER_04 15:26

Yeah. Um it was a blast. Uh but while I was in university, one of my professors had actually was doing a film, was doing an independent film with Macy and some other people. And so we they asked us, they did a call out for anyone who wanted to PA on that set. So I started PA ing on film sets when I was freshman or sophomore in university. So yeah, I was. So you kind of naturally got into it. It kicked me right into it. And by the time I got out of university, I realized that I I hate being on camera. I absolutely I can't, I can't even take a picture without smiling weird. So I I didn't know how that was gonna I don't know why voiceover never occurred to me, but it never did. It wasn't until way later in my career. So uh I thought, well, I can't do that. And then I started temping in New York City, not knowing what I was supposed to do. And I ended up in a massive ad agency called Deutsch, huge, took over a city block in New York City. People would ride scooters around the hallways, and I sort of got adopted by one of the HR people there. She was gonna move to LA. I had no desire to move to LA. Still kind of don't. Sorry, LA.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Wait, so you grew up in New York City?

SPEAKER_04 16:52

Uh I from university on, yeah. I was in New York City for 14 years, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_04 16:59

Long time. So yeah, so I was there and uh I didn't want to move to LA with her, and she said, Well, what do you want to do? And I said, Well, I guess I could go back into production. Production seems closer to what I came from. Right. So she hooked me up with their production group that was making all these big budget commercials. And then they said, Well, what do you want to do? And I said, Well, I don't, I don't really want to sit behind a desk. I kind of want to be out on set. And so then they, in turn, hooked me up with some guys who were doing big budget commercials freelance. And he made the call and he said, Well, I have this girl and she wants to be in, she wants to be a PA in one of your commercials. And he goes, Well, we're working on something right now, but she's gonna have to, she's gonna have to work for cheaper because she's green. We don't know who she is. And he's like, Okay, well, how much do you want to pay her? And he goes, Well, I guess I could give her a rate of 125 a day. And at the time I was making something like $80 a day as a temp, and I was like, Yeah, that that works. That's awesome. That works. And then, and then, yeah, but within a week, they always kicked up to the normal PA rate, which I think has gone down since. I actually think they make less money now than they did then. Oh no. Which is the state of the world as we live in it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Have you worked on any projects with my friends Maurice Lamarche or Chris Diamantopoulos?

SPEAKER_04 18:16

I have, and you're gonna put me on the spot and ask me which ones I've worked with them on. And I'm gonna say the famous ones. Definitely Pinking the Brain, which was taught mostly during mostly during COVID.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Oh, that's right. They brought it back. So you worked on the newer ones?

SPEAKER_04 18:30

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Wow. I thought they were just as good as the older ones.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

Oh no, they were, it was so much fun. And they actually, the two of them, Pinking the Brain, when they would record, even though it was COVID, they wanted to be together. They wanted to record together. Correct.

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 18:46

And they wanted to be able to record together and work off of each other.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:52

So even during COVID, they would go into one of those studios where they could be in separate rooms, but they could see each other through the window and they could actually record together, quote unquote together.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:01

Um, so that they could get that same dynamic. And they were one of the only them and Teen Titans Go that I was working with were the only ones that were kind of doing that, who were all still recording quote unquote together, even though they were all in separate rooms, sometimes in separate states, but they wanted to record together to get that.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

So are you saying that that doesn't happen often these days?

SPEAKER_04 19:23

It's come it is wildly changed. The vast majority of voiceovers now happen one at a time. And they will hear, they might play them in reference or something like that. But for the most part, they're reading their part and then they're putting them all together at the end. I can count on one hand the number of shows we do where they actually bring in people together. Yeah. There's and most of them are older shows, so shows that are reboots of shows that existed a long time ago, and so the casts are the original cast and they're still used to working that way.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:53

There's a direct correlation to whether or not they read their scripts on paper still as to whether they record together still.

unknown 20:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 20:01

COVID changed a lot of things about recording. Right. And one of them was productions discovered they could record people anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Right.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

Anywhere, all the time.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

They don't have to pay for travel anymore.

SPEAKER_04 20:13

They don't have to pay for travel and they can get people. So it used to be like someone's on a big show, oh, they're gonna be unavailable. Right. We'll have to cast someone else, whatever. Now it's like, well, no, you can just go home at night and do the part.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:26

You can either, yeah, you can send them a kit, they can record it from where they are, you can catch them in a studio anywhere, you can. There's like a million options for ways to record people, and so it's kind of opened up the field somewhat to allow more people to record.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Right, and I was asking you earlier, is it more common for people to do the voice parts before they make the animation or after? And you said these days you mostly read the script and then the animators.

SPEAKER_04 20:55

I think that one's pretty common. I think that's been the way it is and has been for a long time, with the exception of a few shows. There are a few shows that are based, kind of depends on who's developed the show.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Right.

SPEAKER_04 21:06

The vast majority of them, it is voice-based. So you write a script, the actors come in, they read it, and their energy and the way that they read it and the personality that they give it, then inform the people who are drawing all the boards and drawing the animatics and then drawing the animation. They're informing that.

SPEAKER_03 21:27

Right.

SPEAKER_04 21:27

And then you only come back in and do ADR, which is when you're matching what you say to the exact lip flaps of your character. Right. And you do that when you have a line that gets changed, or you're not allowed to say sugar snaps, you have to say, you know, sugar crispy snaps or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Right.

SPEAKER_04 21:44

Now you're matching that. That's the way most are done.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

And I imagine when you go into different languages, then you have to do that. Then they have to match dubbing.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

Right, dubbing. Which is a whole, yeah, that's a whole other industry. Some people make their entire livings off dubbing. Um, but there are some shows that are run by kind of run by the artist. And so if you're coming from a drawing perspective, sometimes they're doing that first. So sometimes you'll get almost the creation, the visual creation first. And now you're going back and you're it's almost like you're ADRing the whole thing. You're you're matching scratch track or something like that. So people are pre-reading it and then the actor's coming in and trying to match that scratch track.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Oh, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 22:32

That happens occasionally. There's, I think, I think I've worked on two shows that have worked that way.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

It is challenging because now you have an actor who is trying to give a performance, but they have to give that performance to a specific time.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

You're making me think of my good friend Victor Yarod, who worked for the Jim Henson company for many years. He's really good at that. And I think it's partly because he's a percussionist. So he's got that rhythmic timing. So I've just seen him nail the rhythms of things. You know, because he was helping me make some videos and he went back and matched everything perfectly.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

ADR is an art form. There we and that is one of the challenging things with when you're bringing in people who work in different media, like people who are working on screen, and then they come to do voiceover. You don't realize ADR is a it's a skill.

SPEAKER_03 23:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:25

Um, and it's it's challenging. It could be really challenging. And so we have some people who are great at it, and then we have some people who approach it and are like, I have no idea how to do this.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

How to sync up, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:37

Yeah. And you end up either having to do a whole lot of takes until you get the timing, or squish the takes and sort of finagle them within the read, or they on occasion just go back and change the animation, which is incredibly difficult and expensive, but has been done if you have someone who just can't quite get that timing.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Can you tell me some of the other voice actors you work with? I actually, when I looked up your, I guess I would call it filmography, did you work with Mark Hamill once too?

SPEAKER_04 24:10

Yeah. A lot of people don't know that Mark Hamill actually does a ton of voices.

SPEAKER_02 24:14

He's astounding. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:15

Does so, so many voices.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Um He did a lot of Batman stuff back in the day.

SPEAKER_04 24:19

Yeah. And he's one of the original voices on uh the regular show and on some of the other properties. Yeah. So he he does an amazing amount of voices and really is so talented, way beyond what people know about him.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Which is I saw him do a really good Harrison Ford when he was on a talk show too. He can do it perfectly.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

I bet. I bet. And that's that's the create that's the thing about being a voice actor, right? Like he is known for being this on-screen talent. Right. People don't realize all the times they've heard him in history, they've not known that was him. They have no idea.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

And it must be great for someone like him who's still very recognizable to I mean, he probably doesn't do this, but he could get up and not care about what he's wearing or how he looks and just come in here and knock it out of the park, you know.

SPEAKER_04 25:06

He can yeah. Oh, absolutely. And he he also can just record. He's one of those people who can just record from home. Like he can have a whole setup and everything, which is great. And that allows that flexibility. That's what this world, the new world allows that, right? It allows you to be wherever you are and still do that art form. That's why there were so many shows coming out during COVID from animation, because animation can be done without ever seeing each other. And some people, some of the artists would prefer that.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Um they must run into each other later. Hey, we worked on that together, did we?

SPEAKER_04 25:43

Oh, oh yeah. You should animation rap shows are hilarious because people just often don't know each other at all. Right. Because some of them work completely from home, some of them, you know, work on different ends of the spectrum and never seen each other. Like people just don't even know each other because so much of it can be done sitting in a room, right all by yourself, and yet you're collaborating. It's it's a unique thing.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Who are two or three of the other voice actors who you often work with?

SPEAKER_04 26:19

Oh gosh. Well, you have people like so, like a Dee Bradley Baker, who is crazy amazing. Uh, if you haven't checked out Dee Bradley Baker, you should really go. He's got an amazing website where he talks about the art form. He does every monster voice you probably ever heard. He's incredible. Um, he has an absolutely beautiful home setup that he can record from. And he, like I said, he does all these tutorials and things. He's really, really amazing. Uh Fred Tate Shore, who also does a lot of deep, beautiful voices and monster voices, absolutely incredible, wonderful. Like they're all wonderful people. They're they come in here and they're just so happy to be part of the art form.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

It's where you guys get to play for a living. Tell me a couple of women that you work with.

SPEAKER_04 27:06

Candy Milo comes in. I love Candy Milo. She's so much fun. She does a bunch of the Looney Tunes voices. Her and Eric Bowser like can do the entire cast, basically.

SPEAKER_03 27:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 27:16

Between the two of them. It's really, really fun. Um obviously, we have people like Hinden Walsh and um other people from Teen Titans go Tar Strong and all of them who've just been doing it for so, so long. And it's can you imagine? I I I want to know what it's like to just wake up one day and and realize you have a career that's this voice is gonna take me for the next 20 years. Amazing, fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

And as you get older, you can still do the voice and it sounds pretty much the same.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Because we're here and our voices are all scratchy. What happens when a well-known voice actor comes in and their voice is kind of a mess? Do you have um secret magic stuff that you give them so their voice comes back?

SPEAKER_04 28:00

Well, so that's what I was just I was just drinking. Uh I mean, there's throat coat. I think everyone knows throat coat, the tea. And there's this there's this syrup stuff. I think it's actually Fred that told me about it, or maybe it was Jeff Bergman. But there's this, there's this Chinese herbal drink, which is like a low-quat syrup.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:23

That is another magical one that you just people put it in their water or they take it straight and it just coats your throat and allows you to make it through a session.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Amazing.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

But the truth is, if your voice is sounds like mine does right now, right? A lot of the time you just cancel the session.

SPEAKER_03 28:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:39

You just wait. Because at some point you can't match anymore your own voice. Yeah. So if you're doing a brand new character, sure, fine. It's a one-off, no problem. But if you're gonna have to match that character later, yeah, you're gonna need your voice to be at its normal level.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

I've read that a lot of singers I like realize when they wake up in the morning their voice has a lower pitch, so they try to record those parts then. Have you noticed that with voiceover artists? Are there voice changes through the day?

SPEAKER_04 29:08

I haven't ever that's an interesting thought. I've never had anyone say that they try to record certain things at different hours, with the exception of I've had people say they won't record either before a certain time or after a certain time. And probably because they know they won't be able to match their voice.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Yeah. Tell me all about Gandhi Tartakovsky, one of my all-time favorite cartoon creators. I mean, my wife Christine and I are boys with Django and Caleb. We all watched all his shows. And I still do. I was completely impressed with Primal. Such a good show. Yeah, it was almost no dialogue.

SPEAKER_04 29:52

Almost no, yeah. We we got to record that here, and it was really, really fun because it is. It's all just like grunts.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yeah. Fang and spear. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:02

Um, and they they got to do that. That was actually one of the ones where they pulled in several guys at the same time, and like big, big guys like Nord, like big voices that we know well, and they all recorded together, but their recording to there, there was like grunting.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

And when you when I heard about the show, I was like, I don't know if I want to watch that. There's no dialogue, and I was sucked in right away, and all the emotions and the characters come through no matter what. I think there's a tiny bit of talking, because I watched the whole thing, but I would say 98% is just caveman talk.

SPEAKER_04 30:35

And that that's the that's the blessed thing about being Gandhi, right? Like because you have he has that legacy behind him. He has that, you know, amazing reputation. He's permitted the opportunity to do shows like that. Like who gets to pitch a show where no one talks?

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Well, I mean, I'm sure that if you do something like Hotel Transylvania that allows you to try your weird ideas out.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

Yeah. Right. You that you that only comes with time and exposure. Yeah. I guess unless you're a YouTube fella and you're making you know, scary movies, in which case. It's also time and exposure, though. Those guys worked for years before they ended up with a with a film career.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Oh, they all yeah, paid their dues. Can you think of a good memory of working with Gandhi?

SPEAKER_04 31:25

Can I think of a good memory of working with Gandhi?

SPEAKER_02 31:27

What's a show that you had a lot of fun working on with them?

SPEAKER_04 31:30

I mean, it's pr it's primal.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:32

Primal was a blast. It was really, really fun to see the people who came in for it. Um, although I I think that all of Gandhi's shows they get really fun talent to work on it.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

So it's they they all sound really good. And for what you do for a living, um, I love the music of Primal, which was Tyler Bates from Marilyn Manson's band and Joanne Higginbottom. I mean, the music, the sounds, the voices. So I remember in Primal, there's like these pterodactyls. What's it like when you're trying to come up with a voice for an animal?

SPEAKER_04 32:07

Oh, well, that's and that's why you hire very specific people. Like there are people who do their entire careers out of how to place those sounds within their head.

SPEAKER_03 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:18

Because these are there, you're looking at guys that there's no way that sound would ever come out of them. I'm thinking of a time that D, I was on a record C Bradley Baker, who's doing a bat, a bat sound. And D's like, you know, pretty normal big guy. And the sound that comes out of him is this high-pitched, tiny little sound of a bat. I have no idea how that even places in his where he's doing that. And yet he could make that bat sound like it was sad. It was a sad bat, it was a happy bat, it was an angry bat. But that is his specialty, right? That is there, they have spent their lives figuring out how to place and create these sounds within themselves and then act, because it's not just creating the sound, it's then creating that sound with a whole personality and emotion behind it. It's it's an incredible, incredible talent.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Where do you draw the line between if there is a a kid, a child character in a show between like getting a kid or getting an adult that can do a kid's voice? I'm I would guess that for continuity, you'd probably want an adult.

SPEAKER_04 33:37

That's an that's an interesting question.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Because in primal, there were some little kids.

SPEAKER_04 33:43

It's it's an internal question, I have to say, because those casting for those sorts of shows, any any show, any show that's gonna have a child, right, is always a balance of whether you want to have this sort of authentic child sound or if you're gonna go for an adult who can make a kid sound. And I gotta say, some of the times that adults are doing kids, you can't tell. Can't tell.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:07

But sometimes they're going for that authentic like perspective that a child brings to the role. Um and you have to understand that with that comes the very real possibility that they're going to grow and change out of their minds.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

The voice is gonna drop.

SPEAKER_04 34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

Although I will say that is one of the places where AI may come to the rescue for these child actors not to lose their roles because they'll be able to continue to act the part and then use their child voice on top of that.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

So that's like a Can I carefully ask the question? If you use AI for a child's voice, do they still get paid?

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Oh, that's cool. No, I think I am gonna I am gonna this is not Warner Brothers nor any of the subsidiaries. Um we have not yet gone that direction. Oh, we are not quite there yet, although the technology kind of is.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

The technology is there, and I have seen it in use. And I know that every company has been exploring how to use this and when to use this. And I think every producer has been trying to visualize when it's a good use and when it's a bad use.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Well, you know, the first time I was aware of it is there's this great book, The Andy Warhol Diaries, which are actually his diaries. And of course he's passed on, but they took recordings of him fed into AI, and it was him narrating the documentary. So I think in some of those cases it does make sense.

SPEAKER_04 35:33

Yeah. I again it's when it comes down to getting paid and all of those sorts of things, it gets into a very tricky situation. Yeah. And I think that's what all of the all of the unions and all of the different groups are trying to figure out how they do that.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

How to make it clear to everybody, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:52

Yeah. And it's tricky because a lot of people that they're looking back at are voices that existed before any of this was even a possibility.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Right.

SPEAKER_04 36:02

So now how are you protecting that legacy into the new world? It's it's uh man.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

It's yeah, do you want to get someone to do James Earl Jones' voice or do you want to use his voice?

SPEAKER_04 36:17

James Earl Jones, I know. Isn't it's wild, right? It's a whole new world.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Or you could get Maurice Lamarche does a great William Shatner if you've not heard it.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

I don't think I have heard him.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

And in fact, I think he originated the talk like William Shatner Day of the Year, where everybody gets together and tries to do it.

SPEAKER_04 36:38

Are there parties like that? I can't tell if that'd be fun or maddening after 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

I have a thing on YouTube, probably the most viewed thing I have is my tutorial on how to talk like William Shatner. I haven't seen that yet. Yeah, it's called uh uh Maurice Lamarche. I guess you'd find it on my channel. It's just international talk like William Shatner Day. My friend Bill Bigger, um one day we were riding the car and he goes, You heard of this thing? Uh uh uh International Talk like a Pirate Day. I said, Yeah, it's kind of silly, isn't it? And he goes, Yeah. You know what you should do? You should do international talk like William Shatner Day. You should teach people how to talk like William Shatner. Do it on his birthday. I don't want to. So he sticks he sticks a camera in my face while I'm driving him to the airport two days before Shatner's birthday. And he says, uh, just just teach me how to do Shatner. So I talk to the camera as though it's Bill, and I give this lesson on how to talk like William Shatner. And uh the first thing you've got to do, of course, is put a certain pause in your voice. And the next thing you've got to do is whenever you say the word you, you've got to say it as though it's a bad smell. You. Um and so there's this and it went viral because um Because your buddy put it up. Well, the he put it up uh on my channel. I gave him my password, and and and then uh there used to be the site called Ain't a Cool News, yeah, and it went viral because he had a million followers. So it's a the brain teaches you how to talk like William Shatner for International Talk like William Shatner Day. So on Shatner's birthday in that year, uh it got, I think, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand views, and um and it and then Shatner started tweeting about it. Really? It's international talk like me day. Look, who am I supposed to talk like? So we've had this back and forth with uh international talk like how long has that been going on? I don't know. I can't I've lost track of what what year we did it.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

So, one more question about a show like Primal. You're in charge of sound. So at the end of the day, when the show's almost done, an episode, you're in charge of making sure the voices, the foley artists, the soundtrack, everything is bouncing out and sounding the way that the showrunner wants.

SPEAKER_04 39:09

You're talking about the mix, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:11

The final mix of all these sounds that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 39:14

So mostly just depends on who is doing the mix. Um, for R and most of the time the mix is done by a specific mix house. So we deliver all the elements to them, and now they're finalizing that mix. And then, yes, the most of the time everyone's sitting in the same room. It's just like edit, anything else, mix. Everyone's sitting in the room so they can hear, they can adjust, they can do those final touches. Um and the mix is super important because it is that final moment.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

And you do this so much you must be able to be like, oh, wait a second, that wasn't loud enough.

SPEAKER_04 39:50

Or well, the yeah, the mix that's where your that's where your engineer comes in. Because that engineer has fine-tuned ears. And it's more than that, because it's also how are you delivering it? Like there's a there's a million different ways to deliver the sound. How you're putting it out. Is it coming out as stereo? Is it coming out as Atmos? Is it coming out as like there's uh all these different ways?

SPEAKER_02 40:11

And it's got to sound good on someone's phone as well as on a big TB sound system, right? Yeah, that's tricky.

SPEAKER_04 40:17

And it's but there's I would say there are several different departments. There's your mix that's doing that, but you also have people who are specifically given the task of just coding it out and creating those files to be put out to all the different places they have to play. Those are different teams. They're all doing the same thing. They're all making sure that when you hear this on your phone or your laptop or your iPad or your, you know, huge projection screen, it's gonna come out in the quality that you expect. And I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 40:50

Well, and for lack of a better term, I'm sure you have some kind of template that's and then you tweak it.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

There there's crazy amounts of text backs that go with each one of those things. And the the crazy thing is because now we deliver everywhere. It's not like it's not like, okay, yes, I'm making this for CBS and it will show on CBS, and that is what is gonna happen, and it's always gonna be exactly the same. No. Now it's gonna be like, well, I don't know. Is it gonna be an Apple TV? Is it gonna be an HBO Maps? Are there gonna be commercial breaks? Is there gonna be are they gonna be what timing are those commercial breaks gonna be? Where is this gonna cut? Where's do we is it a different, like, do you are you putting on different tops and tails? Like, are you putting on a different um credits sort of display because of what it's showing on? Are you putting it on the phone?

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Is it widescreen, all that stuff?

SPEAKER_04 41:36

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 41:37

I bet something you guys think about is I'm imagining a family driving in a car and they give the kids in the backseat an iPad. So that's probably very important. Make sure it sounds good with that, right?

SPEAKER_04 41:49

The iPad is the most important delivery. I mean, it is really funny because we we go in and we fix these TV shows on a massive screen TV. We went and took a look at these. We the they're these huge projection rooms. It's like watching a movie. And so you're watching this TV show on this enormous screen that they do the final color correct, and you hear the sound, and all these things come through. It's huge. And every time you're sitting in one of those, you're thinking about the fact that someone's gonna be watching this on their tiny little iPhone as they're driving down a road.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yeah, I've watched most of my older son Django and I watched all of Samurai Jack, probably on TV in general. But like I told you, we got to go see Gendi Tartakovsky show the last few episodes in the theater, and boy, what a difference.

SPEAKER_04 42:44

What's incredible is that those read so well, yeah, large and small. And I think that is because they're produced that way. They're we do produce them to be able to see be seen on those massive screens as well as small ones. Um so you are able to you are able to put those in all these different areas, which is kind of insane when you think about it.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

Yeah, it is crazy. And it just has to look and sound good wherever it is.

SPEAKER_04 43:10

Wherever it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Tell me when you were younger, one cartoon that you loved and you still think about like everything you love about it.

SPEAKER_04 43:19

Oh man. I mean, I was a total theater nerd, so I loved all the Disney movies and the music. I can still sing the scores.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

Like the little Yeah, Little Mermaid.

SPEAKER_04 43:33

Oh man, I know it's so cheesy, but it's true. Like, I loved when you know when he's attacking the crab with the the chef is chasing the crab and singing the le poisson. Like, I love all of that stuff. So all of those. Those were I grew up with those. We used to have them on VHS, like a whole Disney library, and we would pop them in every weekend. We would watch some Disney movie or another. And that music, that music and that production has always stuck with me, which I know is like heresy to say as I sit in Warner Brothers. Sorry, Warner Brothers. But that's what I grew up with.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

For you and your job, I know you're mostly in charge of sound, but at Warner Brothers, how do they decide like what show's gonna be 2D and what's gonna be 3D? Is there one that's more popular, or is it just try whatever?

SPEAKER_04 44:27

I have no idea. I do know that that's sort of pitched way early on, right? Like when we're doing pitches initially, you're talking about what it's gonna look like. They're g they're doing designs, they're showing the basic ideas behind it, and they're already pitching it as whether it's because most of the Tardakovsky stuff I like is 2D. I would say the vast majority of Warner Brothers stuff is 2D. Yeah. Like we most things are done that way, and that sort of harkens back to history.

SPEAKER_02 44:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 44:56

Um there's lots of great things to be done with 3D as well. We just most of the things through IP and such are sort of from that 2D background. So it just makes sense to continue to live with the code.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Be traditional. Yeah. Tell me about Rare Flower Productions. When I looked up your name, this popped up often.

SPEAKER_04 45:20

Uh so Rare Flower Productions was my my overarching production name that I used forever. So I worked with companies, but I was also a freelancer for I mean, my life. So I've done I've done run music videos out of that company. I have done compositions out of the company, I've done it.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

So it's like your personal production company.

SPEAKER_04 45:45

It is my personal production company. So whenever I need a production company to run something, it'll be Rareflower Productions, which is why it comes up over everything because I've been doing it since I was, I don't know, 20.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Wait, so if you were at church and the people told you they needed to do a patriotic anthem, but it needed to be a cartoon, that would be through Rare Flower.

SPEAKER_04 46:08

Actually, that would be through Inspire because that is their brand.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_04 46:14

But uh yes. If they wanted to do a documentary on the church, then I would run it through Rare Flower Productions.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Indeed. I look forward to that.

SPEAKER_04 46:22

All right. I'll let you know when that's coming out.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

Now I know this is not your division. I wanted to ask you, how do you find out how kids watch the shows these days? Do you know anything about that? Well, like when I ask, I'm a music teacher, when I ask my students how they watch how they watch stuff, I kind of call them the YouTube generation. Most kids that I've taught and I've taught from you know TK up to 12, they watch on their phone and they watch YouTube. So how important is that to you guys to find out how kids are watching? Like are they watching TV with their parents?

SPEAKER_04 47:00

You're right, that's not my division. I don't exactly know how they're coming about that. I do know that there is a lot of oh shoot. I know that they do a bunch of research on that. I know from our perspective here, we do it mostly anecdotally on how people are doing it. Although a lot of people are they're getting it through the fans, right? A lot of these productions are based on fan bases, and so they know they are getting that information from their fan bases of how they're watching.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Aaron Powell Now you have three kids that I know very well that are very different ages. Have you noticed any differences between the youngest one, the middle one, and the oldest one on how they watch what they like to watch? Or are they all just playing video games with headsets on and talking to their friends that are in their other homes?

SPEAKER_04 47:47

They definitely they consume media differently for sure. Yeah. Although there's also restrictions, right? Like the youngest one is not allowed to be on YouTube by her.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

She's smart though. She's probably figured it out.

SPEAKER_04 48:00

She has figured it out, and we've had to take away iPads because she'll be on things she's not supposed to be. Uh whereas the boys just would never even approach that. They knew they weren't allowed to be on it, so they wouldn't be on it. Um, so they get to keep their media.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

See how that She's probably gonna turn into a secret agent. That's my prediction.

SPEAKER_04 48:16

I think she already is a secret agent, sadly. Yeah, I think we have a spy in our household.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Indeed. Spy versus spy. What are some of the shows you're currently working on?

SPEAKER_04 48:30

What are some of the okay, what am I allowed to talk about is the real question.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Well, you can even say what's something that you worked out. What is something you worked on in the last two years?

SPEAKER_04 48:40

So we've done kind of a wide range of shows, which is awesome. It's amazing that I get to work on like we worked on a show called Batwheels, which was big here and absolutely massive in England, I think. I think was their number one kids' show. So that's like a that's a really young kids' show.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

Um is that for a specific age?

SPEAKER_04 49:02

It yeah, yeah, I think it's a preschool and elementary school age group.

SPEAKER_03 49:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

Um so we would do that show where they're singing fun bat songs on the same day that we're doing like Caped Crusader, which is the film noir version of Batman with all sorts of, you know, death and killing. And and so you would, you know, we would switch between these two things. It's so much fun to see the range of animation here. Because we do we in the shop, we get to touch every single show that comes through, whether it's Warner Brothers or Cartoon Network, and even most of the Hanna Barbera shows. So it's this crazy array of everything that animation can do. Right. Um, as you you have to referencing primal, which is a great example of something that is so completely different.

SPEAKER_02 49:59

And super violent.

SPEAKER_04 50:01

Super violent. And there's, you know, there's a part of the population that is gonna see it and absolutely love it, and then there's a part of our population that will never even know it ever existed.

SPEAKER_03 50:10

Right.

SPEAKER_04 50:11

Um, which is just insane to me. There's so much of that where it's like these shows that have so much love behind them.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 50:19

I'll go back to my hometown in Pennsylvania and they'll be like, I I I don't uh is that a Looney Tunes character that I don't know about.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

So at the end of every interview, I like to read a quote and then have you respond to it. So here we go. One more time. Gandhi Tardikovsky once said this for me, animation is the character of life. It's something that we create from the ground up.

SPEAKER_04 50:48

Yeah, I mean, that is what we do here, right? We build. You were talking about the building of character, often starting from the voices themselves.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 51:00

So you do build an animated show. It builds from an idea, then you put voice to it, you put emotion to it, character to it, and you add some drawing and some color.

SPEAKER_03 51:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:14

And you build it and build it and build it until it takes this life on of its own and lives out there in the world. So yeah. I would agree with Gandhi. Think you got that right?

SPEAKER_02 51:28

All right. So how can people track what you're working on? Uh are you on social media? Do you have a website? Should they just go to Warner Brothers?

SPEAKER_04 51:37

I mean, they can just check out IMDb.

SPEAKER_02 51:41

That's got all your stuff.

SPEAKER_04 51:42

I I have to say, I so for years I worked on commercial productions and I worked in politics and I worked in all these things, and my my work was up there on TV, but you would never know I was involved because of course all this people your name never gets associated to any of those things.

SPEAKER_02 51:58

It's it's very like Yeah, when you tell me you're working on Primal, I was waiting to see your name in the credits. They went so fast, I was like, wow, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_04 52:10

Yeah, and that's so for years I I worked on all these things and I never even thought about credits because it just wasn't something you did. And then I started working at Warner Brothers, and it's a real studio, and so credits become this important thing, and everyone is concerned about credits. And again, I had come from this background where I didn't even think about them.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

Right.

SPEAKER_04 52:30

And all of a sudden, my IMDB, it looks like I'm an overnight sensation because like I have nothing from my time before, and then all of a sudden I worked here, and now I have it's just it's insane the amount of shows because of course in sound in our production here, we touch everything. Right. So I get to work on every single show. So as long as we keep making shows, my IMDB, it's a thing of beauty.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

I had one more question I forgot to ask. So you're like, I asked you about what shows you're working on, and you said, I don't know which ones I'm allowed to talk about. What is the big secret? Why do people worry about not unveiling what's is it because you're worried about another studio stealing the idea, or are there NDAs or like what makes them spy versus spy?

SPEAKER_04 53:18

So there there definitely is NDAs where you're not allowed to talk about certain things. But really, I from my own personal experience, I think one of the biggest reasons is simply fan bases. You don't want to do any spoilers.

unknown 53:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

And what if it doesn't work out?

SPEAKER_04 53:34

What if it doesn't work out? They shelve it, right? Right? What happens if it shelves? That's just disappointing for everybody. But yeah, you don't you don't want to do any spoilers and you don't want to give anything away. You kind of want to allow that surprise and that excitement to happen. And so you don't want to ruin it by talking about it before. It's really funny because there's all these voice actors who will come in here for years on end. We'll be rec we'll be recording for two years before they make an announcement of our show. And so every time the actor will come in, they'll be like, So um, am I allowed to talk about my part yet? Now, now, no, no, no, no, okay, okay, no, not yet. Not yet. And so it no one will talk about Fight Club ever until you're allowed to talk about Fight Club. And it's this whole thing when it finally gets announced. And ironically, now a lot of people are learning when it's been announced from like Google Notices, right? Right. They're finding out that they're allowed to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 54:33

You probably want the element of surprise when there's something like Comic-Con and you show those people a clip before the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_04 54:39

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:40

Correct. So it's I think the main reason behind all of that is fan base. You don't want to spoil people's energy by the So it's not like a shadow government thing. We don't talk about the shadow government.

SPEAKER_03 54:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

I think on that note, I'd like to say Becca, thanks very much for talking to me today. Maybe next time we do this, um, there won't be a fire in Burbank and our voices will be back to normal.

SPEAKER_04 55:07

And we'll have lights in the studio.

SPEAKER_02 55:09

Yeah, and you guys are DC, so we could talk like Batman.

SPEAKER_03 55:13

We don't talk about Batman.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

All right, thanks, Becca.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Hello, my name is Jefferson De Leon, and I am a scientist in the biotech sector and a comedy musician, and I am a proud sponsor of the Creativity is the Cure podcast. Because creativity is central to who I am and what I do. Check out my creations on my website, JeffersonDleon.com. That is J-E-F-F-E-R-S-O-N-D-E-L-E-O-N-E.com, what do you want to do tonight?

SPEAKER_01 56:10

Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.