Tom Pinto has been one of the most prolific documentary and docuseries narrators of the last 25, 30, or more years. His credits include the History Channel, Smithsonian, Paramount Plus, the BBC, Warner Brothers, and the Weather Channel, along with decades and decades of promo and imaging work for outlets like CBS News, CNN, Sirius XM, and most famously, K-R-O-N Kron in San Francisco. He's also, as you may know, a respected coach whose colors of your voice and think visually, act vocally techniques have helped hundreds, maybe even thousands of voice actors become more specific, spontaneous storytellers. On October 20th of this year, 2026, Tom's going to release his legacy project called Primetime Narration: Mastering Documentary Storytelling. It's a course that brings together the lessons, the techniques, the hard-earned wisdom of this extraordinary career in VoiceOver. Tom, it's so great to see you. Thanks so much for stopping by the VOPro podcast. Oh, Paul, I I appreciate you not honoring so much my career, but I can hear it in your voice because you know, you you work very hard, you know, in this industry as a talent and bringing other people together and interviewing others. I think you understand that um this this is is a passion project for me. I i I I had people encouraging me to do it and I'm going, you know, whatever and and it was I have to give Tina Morasco the credit because I said I'm trying to find the time and she goes, Well, you you don't have to have it done in any particular time. Just take your time and and do it. You know, do it and so uh in terms of, you know, writing and taking a look at everything I did, I I feel as though that what had happened over the last, I would say the over the last five years that I kept coming back to uh certain basic tenets that are, you know, critical for a good storytelling. And, you know, particular handouts that I would give to people, you know, to look at this, you know, and and I found that I was that much more structured in the world of TV narration coaching than I had ever been when I would be coaching commercials or promo. Okay. Be because maybe it's because it's long format, Paul. Maybe because there's there's more meat on that rib, so to speak. And so, I I must admit that uh Natasha Marchevka was also she said, Well, I was a student of yours, Tom. She goes, I'll tell you what I learned and I'll tell you what I think other people should learn. And she c she cranked out about five pages, and I guess I said, Okay. I guess I should be doing this. Guess we're doing this, right? So so maybe that's maybe that sort of dovetails into the timing. I mean, you've been doing this for a long time, and that's not a veiled way of calling you an old man, 'cause I am too. Right. Um but my point is you've been doing this for decades. Why didn't now become the time to put all this together in a way that you can package it and teach it to other people in a course? Yeah. Well, I mean Part of it is, you know, do it while you still have brain cells that are firing. But um I I because um because I'm also at a place in my life where um I'm more selective about what voiceover work I audition for or do. Um I also only have so much time with what I'm gonna say long format, long format coaching sessions. I mean, I know that there are commercial coaches who are able to do uh several lessons a week. I can only do a few a week because I feel as though I have to dig a little bit deeper. So I felt like this was a time to maybe put together some basic tenets. I mean, the course is like three, I don't know, a little more than three and a half hours. I don't have the exact time because there's some final tweaking that's going on right now. But it was the right time for me to do it because I'm hoping that it can be, I'm gonna use this word, an adjunct. to i if I'm able to coach privately with somebody and my wait list is not like Bob Bergen's which is out three years. You know, and I'm I'm not critical of Bob. Bob's just very popular on his animation coaching. But, you know, some people don't want to wait four or five months. And so but so this is an opportunity to say, here, it's a course, we'll be up to speed. Uh and I also think that there are people that are going to with the practice scripts that are in there as well. That there are people that are going to be able to work on their own. And I also think that there are, based on comments I've received from uh former clients of mine who've said, you know, this would have been, yeah, this would have been really great to have earlier on. And also, here's what one talent, and I don't want to embarrass him, but he said, I don't get a lot of these auditions. And then sometimes I get it and I go, damn, I wish I had Pinto in my pocket. He says, with this. I'm gonna have you in my pocket because I can look at the considerations and I can look at the script and I can say, okay, what would Tom tell me to do here? What what are the considerations? What are the different aspects of the analysis that I should work on? And so I think um I I th I think it was time for me to lay this down. I enjoy writing too, Paul. So I think it it um it uh it nurtured my creative soul. uh to you know communicate and the other thing is I had an opportunity to okay I wrote it and then I would record a module and then I might go, you know what? That was a little vague or that wasn't right. Or is there a is there a more uh economical way to say that? Or gee, maybe we should show something there as opposed to me saying it. So it was a real process. And as a writer, because I I am still, I say I'm an aspiring writer, you know, a couple of my writing mentors, you know, say a good writer is a good rewriter. So it gave me joy to work on this and say, you know what? It's not done until it's done. So anyway, I'm I'm I'm excited. I'm excited to uh to do it. And I've also, you know, I had a project that I was working on, and yes, it was a writing project. and voiceover project together. It was a horror show. And I was cast to be the narrator and some ancillary characters. And then also I ended up writing four of the twelve episodes. And then I ended up helping to produce and pull together clips. I mean it really got involved and it kind of, you know, the creativity was great, but I was serving somebody else now. So I had to put the course a little bit on on the back burner in order to to work on that. So um You know, I think the timing is divine now. You know, it it is, you know, we waited, we've been patient, and um I wouldn't redo the journey for anything because it the the journey I think was what it was supposed to be. When you talk about timing, let's let's jump in the time machine, go all the way back to the beginning of your career as a narrator, Tom. Mm-hmm. And What if you could have a conversation with that younger Tom Pinto, the brand new budding narrator, what did he miss? What did he misunderstand? What didn't he know that now to present day Tom seems so damn obvious? That's a great question, and I can tell you that during the time pre-digital, okay? Um If I was doing I'm gonna start with corporate narration. So there were certain things where they would say, well, we need a more 30 sounding corporate voice as opposed to a deeper, older school, dare I say, Ernie Anderson, Don Lafontaine, Chuck Riley, those kind of guys. Okay. Um, and you know, I would look at 30 pages and I'd go, oh, get nervous. Because clarity, everything else, uh focus, enunciation, things like that. And and and I was looking at the micro as opposed to the macro. And the biggest thing that I learned on my very first documentary project that I booked, it was a docuseries actually. Booked the audition, and I remember having I was a little nervous, okay, going to the first session, and as we were going through, you know, the 48 some odd pages, and uh they said to me, okay. We've broken this down here in cells. So we're going to be doing this a cell at a time because I want to make sure I have options. And I realized, oh my God, I don't have to be like an audiobook later reader and just keep going on and on for fear of editing because they wanted specificity. And I leaned into that in terms of giving more variety on the different cells. So I wish I had known that before I even started, I probably would have embraced it a little earlier. But on top of that, I was also still starting to do writing there. And it was saying, writer's intent, writer's intent. What is the purpose of this? What makes this show different from other shows? You can't just if this is a Civil War based theme. It was a show about guns, as said this the second series I ended up doing. You know, I had to c every time I found something interesting, I remember the one producer. He would he would hit the he would hit the playback. And he was a southern guy. And he said says, Tom, I I love the way it just sounded like you were you were learning that for the first time. I really loved how you and so I decided, you know what? They wanted me to discover. So the audience would discover. And I have probably hung on to that in terms of morsels from different producers and directors. I I think that's probably maybe one or two. Number one or two that I also wish I had known that maybe a few years earlier. But that's that's that's okay. I the journey is the journey. And uh I narrated my first docuseries in 1994, so I don't feel uh I don't feel too bad that it's been only thirty-two years in working in this particular uh genre of voiceover. You mentioned uh the idea, this this concept of what makes this show different. Let's flip the script on that for a minute because you've done everything from nature programming to historical documentaries to the supernatural, lighter docuseries. What Are the common storytelling skills that are the common thread through no matter what the subject matter might be? Yeah. Well, good writing is going to set the table. It's going to enumerate what the reason is that we're talking what the subject matter that we're talking about, and then we're going to put a pin in it. Then we're going to give them, we're going to stick the landing with some kind of discovery, some kind of morsel that we're going to go, wow, that was fascinating. So it draws us to move forward. So I know it's an oversimplification, but it does boil down to beginning, middle, and end. And here's the other thing. Some people say, well, how do you always know beginning, middle, and end? I mean, sometimes there's a beginning, middle, and end, many times in just a sentence. Subject, verb, direct object. Paul Schmidt fell off the gondola. And his recovery was brutal. Beginning maybe. Where a lot of people, Paul Schmidt, fell off the gondola and his recovery was brutal. They wanted to be smooth and everything as opposed to no lean into the character. Lean into here we go, even if it's lighter material. The challenges. Every good story, talking from a writer's standpoint, every good story is built on challenges or conflict and surprises. Anytime, you know, my my buddy Reed Shelley, and I want to give him a shout out because he was also a director on um one of the reality series I worked on when he was uh doing a lot of that for GRB Entertainment. Um, you know, he he would just say uh you know, he he'd just say, you know, you you got you got to lean into you got to lean into why g the the good givea shit factor about this. You can't just go with melody and um and everything. And it but but if he's looking at my writing he'll say he'll say, okay, well this is going along very well. When is something bad going to happen? Or, you know what? I mean they're not buddy buddy yet. They're not the the the the art their character arc is they're not together. They're still prickly. And so you know, and and it reminds me in a great movie, by the way, if people love to write, uh if you ever want to aspire to write a good a good, funny yet believable story, buddy story, purchase a copy of not just the movie uh Midnight Run, but the screenplay Rid Midnight Run with Robert De Niro and Charles Groden because The journey of those two characters and the challenges, two step forward, one step back, two step forwards, one step back. So and I think documentaries are the same. You know what? I if everything is hunky dory twenty minutes into the dock, why the heck should I be watching it to the end? There's no dramatic tension. Exactly. No dramatic tension and tension should ebb and flow. I mentioned it in the beginning in the open, this idea of Uh think visually, act vocally. Can you sort of walk us through what that actually means and what changes in a voice actor's performance when they can start to visualize? A lot of commercial coaches, and and there's nothing wrong with this. I mean, they'll say, I don't know who you're talking to. Okay, so who are you talking to? So many times people say, Well, uh, I'm talking to a good friend of mine, or I'm talking to a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's all will and good. But how would you talk to that friend? How you talk to that friend would depend on what the situation is. So if you're looking at if you're looking at a sentence that is, you know, talking about, you know, a polluted river, okay, if you can just take a chance to visualize what you think that polluted river would look like, it will probably have just a little more gas factor, as I like to call it, instead of give a shit, just in case people are upset about language. It just happens. It it puts us more in the moment. Now, somebody says, I have difficulty doing that. Well, I will suggest to people, instead of just trying to keep going, keep going and and and running into a block wall, go a little bit at a time. Go two sentences at a time and allow your creativity to come through. And the other thing, Paul, is there is nothing like and I I hope this doesn't sound like false modesty, but You know, there are people that are brilliant who can who can just tell weave a story and and w with a cold read, okay? People like Peter Coyote or Leah Schreiber. But the rest of us have to look work a little harder at it. And my success is via immersion. The more you watch, the more you develop a template. If you watch a documentary, And not worry about narrating it, but take a look at it from a standpoint of, my goodness, the narrator slowed down there because the lion was in slow motion taking down the wilder beast. But he also had still energy in his voice. Well, great. The talent got something from watching that. And you can, you know, you know, if you just kind of let that, you know, somehow. find its way to your cerebral cortex, you'll remember that the next time you see something, a script that looks like that. And so immersion. And it's immersion is easy because all you have to do is, you know, click on the click on the show, or even if you don't have cable, buy something for $299, click on the show, click on your CC, your closed captioning, turn the volume down a lot. So you're not totally distracted, but you can hear where the narrative thread is going and follow along. It's, you know what, people say I can't afford lessons. Well, you can afford that lesson. Yes, you can. Self lesson, you know? Absolutely. Uh and and I think that's true for no matter what genre that you aspire to be really good in. You've got to know what good looks like first, right? Yeah, and we are so, let's let's face it, Paul, when I say think visually before you act vocally. It's amazing how the radio industry, the creativity in radio advertising is, and I want to be careful how I say this. I'm not going to say it's non-existent, but it's not what it was 10 or 15 years ago. Absolutely. Um there there was someone, and I again I don't like to use names, but he wrote, he won so many awards as a writer-producer. Creative stuff. Not just funny, but inventive. All the nobody wanted to pay for nobody wants to pay for that anymore. Hence, people want to go to TV or utilizing social media. So we are really gotten into a visual thing. You turn on the radio, a lot of what you hear on radio is direct, you know, direct response stuff. And and and so that is, wouldn't you say that is not really why a lot of people decided they wanted to get into voiceover? They wanted to get into something that was a little more uh creative. So when I say think visually, act vocally, I think it's even more pertinent now because of the lack of opportunities for creativity in radio ads. And in the name of efficiency, Tom, I think too often we repurpose things from one medium to another without really giving the thought of what the strengths of each medium is. And so you've got, you know, repurposed. television ad audio running on the radio, uh where it wasn't intended to run or be wasn't written to be run without pictures, right? Yeah, you notice that I I I notice that sometimes on a major network, you know, a news network that also has a serious XM channel, and then you hear the ad that that's on TV, not the local drop ad. You hear the ad that's on TV, and you're absolutely right, Paul. They're going, Oh, without the pictures here, they're they're missing just a little something, yeah. Our friend Terry Briscoe often says that quite bluntly, nobody gives a shit about your voice. And I think he's right, right? Everybody in this in this business, much less in narration, Tom, has a beautiful, mellifluous voice. What's the difference between somebody that maybe even has really solid training with that nice voice? What's the difference between that person and somebody that a network, a documentary filmmaker is gonna trust with an entire program or documentary or docuseries? Well I'm going to say it is about the voice sometimes in documentary, docuseries work, and here's the asterisk. It's not about how beautiful the voice is, but does that voice radiate the content? Which is part of the reason why when larger companies have the money, they may go to a celebrity because the celebrity has a flavor that even if you don't recognize, I'm going to say the late Paul Sorvino, him doing uh a documentary about an Alcatraz, well, you know what I mean? You don't even have to say, I know that's Paulie Walnuts from Goodfellas, but that he's got that New York, I grew up in that neighborhood sensibility about what prison life might be like. So I think In the world of TV narration, I tell people that sure, we're all looking to be variety, but do know where you fit subject matter-wise. I mean, I have somebody a woman that I've been working with, I think three or four lessons already, and she has got an artistic background and a and a and a and a very strong musical background. Um her voice I think she'd be the first to say that she doesn't necessarily like her voice. It's a theater voice type of thing, and she's trying to find the nuance in it. But I've said to her, yes, we can work on that. But you know what? If I am casting for a documentary about Monet, the way you can go on and on with on, and by the way that her phrasing becomes very instinctive. Instinctive translation, conversational. I like the word instinctive better. Um, that you know what, she's finding her niche. So, you know, a beautiful voice could can unfortunately lull us to sleep if, and that's the condition, if they don't provide variety. So even a beautiful voice should have the highs and the lows. Otherwise, it could be a little hypnotic. And you know, and you find yourself sitting there on the couch because you're on a Sunday afternoon and you're totally interested in this doc, you go, this is gonna be great. I can't wait and then suddenly my wife's doing this. Honey, you fell asleep. oh, God, God, what did I miss? Because because of uh sometimes you know, we you know, variety as an old psychology student, you know, variety re-engages the rat to keep hitting the little bar in order to get his or her food. Variety in exercise. So you see psych 136 A circa 1974 does work. There you go, mom, using using the using the degree for once. And so My my my point is is that, you know, um there are certain voices that get good great voices who are also though great storytellers. So for example, there was a doc that I I saw two or three months ago, and it was Jeremy Irons, and it was about Romania. And I think perhaps they chose him because he has an exotic flavor to it and he has a great sense of History, he's 'cause he's played a lot of historical characters. But even within even within the Jerry Irons thing that's somewhere in here, there was one section where he was talking about a catastrophe that happened in one part of Romania during the Second World War. And I'm going. ah Exactly. Yeah, I and on that thread, I want to learn more about this idea, this technique you teach called the colors of the voice, which is about helping the actor find the different emotions as they roll through a story. And my question to you is, I mean it sounds like a a fairly ah involved process. Maybe it is. Maybe it is it is. So so if it is then my question is how do you avoid overthinking all of that and getting way up in your head? You know and this is Paul, this is an excellent question and I'm gonna tell you Mastering use of the colors technique involves a lot of practice. It involves everyone has their rainbow. You know, your yellow might be different from my yellow, but your s your range from your yellow to your black. It's important that you know what those colors are to you. It's not about, okay, well, I I if if it's black, I've got to be James Earl Jones black or I've got to be Willem Dafoe kind of dark black. No, it's it's your black. But I I I do think that when you're talking about thinking too much, colors is best as a primer that you look at it and you say to yourself at the beginning. If I think that the emotions that I'm looking for, and I'm just obviously people may they won't get this, and that's totally fine. But if if I look at this piece that is kind of natural green, but kind of earthy brown, so it's a combination of green-brown, okay, the entire 60-second spot is not going to be green-brown because every spot has a journey. So eventually, new Colors are going to be layered as we continue to speak without us even thinking about it. If I say, I've got to stay green brown, I've got to stay green brown, I gotta stay green brown, then what do I got? I got monotony. So just like a song, if a song starts with an acoustical guitar type of thing, and then suddenly the second You know, the second eight bars is suddenly the bass line is coming in doing it, and then the the third one, the kick drum is coming in there, and then suddenly the lead guitar player. You know, we've got multiple colors. Okay. I I think music and colors are very, very uh how do you put it? They work well together. They work in conjunction. But um it's uh it's a cheat. It's an emotional cheat to get to something to again To think visually before you act vocally. Um, I can tell you, no, I'm not trying to pimp colors, trust me, because um Chuck Caruculus, who was a a student years ago, but now he's a 20-year veteran voice actor, and he's a co-owner of VoiceTrack San Francisco, and he is the one who now teaches there the introductory color class because he knew colors so well every time I would work with them or he would engineer a class with me and he'd say, sounded like that was a little yellow with a with a brown bow on it. And I'm looking at him and going, whatever. So when it was time for me to start prioritizing which classes I could teach. I pass the baton to Chuck. So the very simple button to this story is this. Sometimes when I'm coaching on Zoom with a voice tracks student, and it could be whatever, and I won't ask what color. I don't because I don't know who some people relate to colors, some don't. So I'll say, Well, what was your MO on this? And the woman might say, Well, it wasn't exactly blue and green. It was sort of kind of like an aqua. almost a chartreuse that I was going for. So and I s would say, well listen to your specificity of your visualization there. So, you know, it isn't just, you know, red, orange, pink, you know, and all that. It is it is all the nuances of color that make us different. That's about as short as I can do because otherwise You know, it is a you know, it is something when when a few people will say, I would love to learn more about your colors, it's usually a couple of lessons just to kind of go through the handouts and and get the person going on their own for this. But I'm flattered that you asked. That's very kind of you. But like any process, it takes practice and skills. It takes development of the skill, right? Yeah. You said something earlier, Tom, that really sort of piqued my curiosity. This the the the comment that the I I guess was a producer made to you that wow, Tom, it sounds like you're learning right along with us. Uh-huh. Talk about that relationship to the audience. Like how do you figure out whether you're to kind of stretch a metaphor a little bit, whether you're sitting next to them in that case, whether you're sitting across from them, maybe teaching them something, you're the expert and they're the student. How do you figure all of that stuff out? The content many times dictates who you think your potential audience is, okay? And there are skeptics, there are people who are willing to learn, there are people that just are looking for good fluff. There are people who lean into humor. Uh there are people that Are okay with walking on the dark side because they're just fascinated by that stuff. If I think about the specific audience a little bit more, that will tell me, am I side by side? Or am I quasi lecturing a la a TED talk situation? The other thing, Paul, is the degree of shot. You know, a a lot of close-ups. You know, if I'm if people are trying to learn how a doctor goes in and removes a tumor or something like that, you know, you can't be talking like this about removing the tumor. I'm I'm I'm joking here, of course. You know, you know, it's usually in here, okay? The other thing is, is there movement or energy within the shot? I think the more energy that's in the shot is going to affect. How casual you are about sharing that information. If it's sad information, then it's about respect as well. If it's something about for those who love breaking rules, well, maybe you don't need to worry about how outlandish you are. It's like when I talked to Scott Parkin about, yeah, you know, Penel, I want to do this, and I said, you know. Fine, you want to narrate a Civil War documentary. Why don't you narrate a documentary about the stupidest things people do when they're when they're studying for their driver's license? And he goes, I could do a whole d hour on that. I go, Well, yeah. I said, then that lends itself to your irreverent style. So I think some of that has to do with, and yes, we don't want to. dominate the material. We want to support the material. Some material, if the material's, then we may have to do more with it, Paul. If the material is excellent, then maybe we don't, because people can learn from just going, and all you're doing is sort of threading one topic to the next topic. So, you know, sometimes material that's a little more scientific. involves a narrator who can master certain technical terms. Um i it's interesting because I was uh teaching a a webinar a few weeks ago and there was one particular audition script and they had put three different audition sections. There was the cold open, the tease to pull people into the show. Then there was uh the beginning of the story telling the the overview of I think it was about the history of cars. And then there was a long paragraph talking about how manual transmission, about automatic transmission, about the person who invented it was able to happen upon a way that would make it easier, blah, blah, blah. Well, it was rather technical. There were technical terms, and you just couldn't leave people hanging out. You had to lean into it to say, wow, here's what I learned. Here's what you can learn. And do it without disrespecting your audience. So I I think on those pieces of that, you know, respecting your audience is important, helping them understand without being uh pedantic. Started this chat, Tom, and mentioned that you've had a long career. Your career, whether you realize it or not, started way before the internet. Five thirty year olds just passed out when I said that. My question is, you've been doing this for a long time. Uh tastes have changed, uh, networks have changed, creative directors have changed. How have you become a talent with all the the great pipes and the technique and all the stuff behind the mic aside? How have you become the guy that keeps getting called back, keeps Working keeps enduring through all of that change over the decades. Well, I think not to use a baseball metaphor. Love good baseball metaphor. Well, you know, I'm not a starting pitcher who's gonna go eight strong innings and fan twelve people. But at this particular point, they may say, you know what? Seventh inning, lefty versus left. I'm bringing in Pinto to pitch to this one. Of course, you can't pitch to one batter anymore. But I'm gonna bring him in here. In other words, my range isn't what it used to be because of age and style. But I stay on top of what's out there to see the trends of this is how someone would narrate. Okay, I'll start on a personal level. Since I've narrated a lot of history that has to do with war, whether it's World War One, World War II, Civil War, uh Vietnam War, that type of stuff. Um, you know, you can you can look at the direction and you can look at the writing and say, okay, well, this is a less bombastic. You know what I mean? Because there's a lot of older school stuff that is very vertical structured, like bullet point type of delivery. That's almost I'm laughing. I'm laughing because You know, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Hi, we need a guy who sounds like he's narrating a World War II documentary about MacArthur's battles. You know what? Gee, I wasn't surprised that I booked that. It was a part for a movie. You know, be a documentary narrator, you know, talking about that. But that's obviously not where it would go today. So I think, you know, uh as my agent said to me, Lisa. I'm laughing because Lisa is knows how to tell truth. She said, I think it was maybe four years ago, five years ago, because I just re uh revamped my uh TV narration demo and it's a video demo on top of it too. But she uh she was you know looking at da da da da da da da da da da and he goes, you know, let let let's lose the uh the the the beach countdown thing. I said, Really? I'm just trying to show the variety because you know what? I may probably still let you audition for that, but if somebody is reaching out to me looking for five men and five women about the best, coolest beaches, I'm they're probably skewing younger. So there you go. Knowing when to let go of certain things and saying, Oh, I'm the voice of wisdom. They'll listen to me when they're looking for the voice of wisdom. So I'll go there. A far cry from nineteen ninety four, where it would have been something like I'm just gonna fake this off the top of my head, you know. These fish find their way down to the bottom of the sea, but they have to look out because this guy is hungry. Okay. So that was, you know, a world of wonder kind of read. Okay. And obviously my voice was probably, you know, not as resonant, but I but those are the that's the kind of phrasing that I would use to talk to that particular. audience there. Well, guess what? That ship is sailed. And it's okay. You just, you know, you you accept you accept what I I'm saying it's not about trying to work hard at at uh I say I'm staying in my lane, but I'm staying in my lane with gusto. Bring it back, Tom, before we go to the course to uh primetime narration. Mastering documentary storytelling. Who is that course for? And if I were to take it, Tom, what would I hear, perceive, or maybe even perform differently after I take the course? Reminders, Paul. For someone of your ilk, okay? I mean, the course is not designed for someone totally new to voiceover. I would say The prototypical person would be somebody who's one or two years into voiceover, working. And of course, it most people are saying, I need to know how to, you know, be able to be a facile commercial talent. They're also understanding that there's a lot of work in the non-broadcast world, as you know, you know, in terms of marketing on that kind of narration. Maybe they're exploring whether or not they want to be into video games. But even audiobook people who are decent telling the story to get them to show this kind of specific storytelling, but what Paul Schmidt would be. And some of my, you know, people who have studied with me, they've got demos and they're auditioning for pieces. But it's a refresher. It's also there it is. You can go back and rewatch it and say, You know what? When I was coaching with Tom, I remember him saying that, but now it's landing more with me because I'm able to lock this down, maybe rewind it, maybe listen to him again, maybe look at the scripts side by side on that. And that's that's part of the reason that I wanted to do. When I was talking about going back and rewriting or going back and retracking, I kind of put myself in that position. Of did I, and I'm gonna use a term that's insulting, but did I dumb this down enough? You know what I mean? Did you know, not did I, did I make it clear enough for people without being pedantic on that? So uh also I think some people forget, and I'll just say this, Paul. You know, people think, well, okay, beginning, middle, and end, be a good storyteller, find the drama. Uh, you know, obviously try to be memorable, uh, try to let it ebb and fl drama ebb and flow, uh, try to really know what that specific audience is, try to be distinctive. So those are all good things. Okay. But what's funny is that some people will deliver we they have de facto phrasing, okay, or de facto vocal placement. And sometimes producers don't want that. You know what? If you lean into it with your legato phrasing all the time, not you, but you know what? You don't you know, it might be something that needs something that's a little more methodical. It might be something that needs a little more throwaway. It might need something that's a higher end staccato. Or, you know, people who de facto use their ch you know, this is my de facto chest voice type of thing that, you know, that They can use the mask more. They can use the tip of the teeth thing. They can use more of a diaphragm thing. Um, their diction, decent diction, average diction, slurry diction almost, because you're trying to sound like somebody who works on a boat, a fishing boat. Just reminders. For because and I've stopped saying the devil is in the detail. Well, I just said it, but unfortunately. My phrase the past two or three years is excellence is in the details. And with so many people wanting to do it, you got to raise the bar for yourself so you don't do de facto Paul Schmidt or Tom Pinto. Absolutely. You describe this course, Tom, as a legacy project. So is it if this is the final definitive record of a stellar career in documentary narration. No mo. So the the obituary's coming. Go ahead. Here's my question. If this is the final record, then what do you want people, voice actors, to take from it? What's the one thing that you could teach them, if you could teach everybody in this course, what's the one thing you hope they get out of it? That they have to have enough self-esteem, enough self-worth to deliver their, I'm gonna call it special something. Whatever the other considerations are, that you've analyzed what the purpose of the documentary is, that you have a certain attitudinal flavor, that you're honoring the visuals, that your phrasing is specific, that you have Honor the fact that there are various interviews in between and you're using those interviews to thread the story, um, that you're envisioning what kind of music is behind you, which gives you just a little more emotional text, that you are considering which network it could possibly be on, the difference between, you know, well, this is going to be on a kids' network or this is on Discovery, but is Discovery Regular or Discovery Kids? Um, is your energy level not a de facto energy? All that stuff put together and then saying who Am I? I am worth putting my stamp on it to be distinctive, just like any other actor when they're doing an on-camera role, to say, you know what? This is how I roll, this is how I do that part. And, you know, to be confident enough to leave something out there that is you. Because then if they don't hire you, It's not because, my God, he was all over the map. He was sounds like he was doing a poor man's poor man's pure coyote or something like that, or Angela Bassett. Instead, they go, Well, you know what? He was distinctive. I'm not sure it's exactly the right fit for the show. But I'll tell you what, why don't we keep putting in the hopper and listen to him again with the other finalists there? And even if you don't get it, that maybe They'll remember that the next time they hear your audition is say, Paul Schmidt, yeah, he read for us on that El Chapo cocaine thing, and let's hear what he's like here. So self-worth, leave your stamp, be confident about leaving your stamp. But the only way you can do that is do the work for how all of those building blocks work for you. Every time we talk, Tom, I come away more inspired uh and smarter. And I'm I'm just so grateful that you were able to spend some time with us today. The uh the course again is called Primetime Narration Mastering Documentary Storing Tell Storytelling. It comes out on October twentieth. The great Tom Pinto. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tom. Paul, thank you. I it's it's always enjoyable and it's it's always not long enough, but I it's okay. Best best to you, my man, as always in continuing what you what you do to help the VO community out there. Thank you, sir. It's very kind of you.