Voice actor and entrepreneurial spirit Cristina Milizia joins THE VO BOSS podcast to share her VO and GVAA journey. From her iconic performances in "League of Legends" to her shows on Nickelodeon, Cristina's career has spanned, toys, games, animation, and more! Cristina talks about her artistic influences and passion for performance, how being bilingual influences her career, and unexpected stardom in the face of adversity. Beyond the microphone, Cristina's legacy is amplified by her profound impact on the voice acting community through the Global Voice Acting Academy (GVAA) and its pivotal rate guide. We discuss the ethos of leadership, the cultivation of a nurturing community, and the unyielding push for fair compensation in the industry.
00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a V-O boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.
00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the V-O Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzzaa, and I am so excited to be here with a very special guest who is not only super Uber talented but one of my closest friends. Cristina Milizia is an award-winning bilingual voice actor and coach specializing in animation. She is a 2022 Voice Arts Award winner for outstanding animation character, film or TV best voiceover and is best known for voicing Annie and a Moo Moo on League of Legends, poison Ivy on Cartoon Network's DC superhero girls, Jessica Cruz for Lego DC Carlitos on the Casa Grande's, teresa for Barbie, mattel and Baby Bottle on the Cuphead Show. And while most of you know her for her acting roles, guess what? She is also a badass entrepreneur and a boss like no other, and she's the founder of the GVAA and the creator of the GVAA Rate Guide. Ah, Cristina, I am so excited to finally have you on the show.
01:19 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Thank you so much for having me. Also, any excuse to get to be with Ann is, like you know, awesome. I feel so fancy with your introduction, so thank you.
01:30 - Anne (Host) That long list of credits is amazing and I just want to reiterate, bosses out there, while most of you probably know her for her amazing acting abilities and her characters, I wanted to bring Cristina on because she's a pioneer woman. She is an entrepreneur from gosh knows. We've known each other for how long, Cristina now 10 years, 10 years about yeah, I think, at least 10 years.
01:52 Cristina was like a baby when she started the GVAA, and there's nothing more entrepreneurial than just starting an online school and then having the idea for the GVAA Rate Guide. So let's talk a little bit. Maybe brush people up on your career, because you've been acting for also, you're like 12 and you've been acting for 31 years.
02:12 - Cristina Milizia (Host) At least right. I have been acting for 31 years, so I am about to be 40 on February 1st, so very shortly, Happy birthday.
02:19 - Anne (Host) Thank you.
02:20 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Happy early birthday. Yeah, I know, that's a big 140.
02:23 - Anne (Host) Right.
02:24 - Cristina Milizia (Host) I'm feeling that when I'm like, wow, that's impressive, but no, I started acting when I was about eight years old. Again, my parents are musicians, so I was used to being on stage with them because they couldn't afford babysitters, so they were just like hey, kid, shake this maraca on stage, and that's what we did. So I learned to play all kinds of random instruments and sing three-part harmony and I got used to from a very early age just being like and I say this to my students you need to get used to being a dancing monkey to a certain degree which is like hey time to dance.
02:54 Okay, yes, I can do that. Ta-da Be ready to just go. And I had training really early on for just taking direction, performing on call, being on stage, which was an incredibly valuable skill set to have at an early age before you get to that point where you're more self-conscious.
03:11 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I was going to ask you were you ever scared to be on stage or scared to perform, or was it just because it was so ingrained at a young age? Did it just happen?
03:20 - Cristina Milizia (Host) No, I was never scared again because it just happened. Since I was so small it just seemed like part of my family life, along with sound checks and winding cable and everything else we did. It actually just got embarrassing when I got to like nine or 10 and my parents are performing at the school and I'm up there and I'm like, oh my God, please, all my friends are here. This is so embarrassing. I don't want to be like you are, family is playing and I'm just like, oh my God.
03:46 So, yeah, around between eight and 12, I got embarrassed about it and then I wouldn't play with them anymore and then I wanted to do my own thing and I danced as well and I ended up dancing professionally for quite some time, before I had an accident when I was 25 that made that no longer possible. So, yeah, it was a very artistic upbringing, so that definitely prepped me for just being in the booth. And so when I started doing some voiceover, the very first audition I did I booked and it was with casting director Ned Lott, who went on to cast for Miyasaki and Disney character voices. And, yeah, he cast me my very first job ever and I still work with him, which is really cool.
04:22 - Anne (Host) That's awesome. That's really awesome. And so your transition. I guess, when did you transition full time into voiceover?
04:29 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Well, I was determined not to be an artist because my parents, you know, were very much like kind of starving musicians growing up and it's a very difficult lifestyle, it's a very difficult profession to really make a full time living in, and so I was determined not to do that. So I studied like statistics, I went to like the school of management and I was like, oh my God, no, I can't.
04:47 - Anne (Host) Not unlike being an entrepreneur right and having your own business. I mean, we're all kind of starving artists, aren't we In our own right? Yeah, so you studied statistics and said uh-uh.
04:56 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yep, and then I went to the School of Management and actually that was very helpful because, even though I didn't stay there, I actually learned a lot about management and communication with teams and how to deliver messaging and communication and people management, and so that actually was very useful. Even though I didn't complete my education there, I ended up going back to transfer to UC Berkeley and then studied theater, but dipping my toe in the business world and management was actually something that was very useful later on when starting GVAA.
05:25 - Anne (Host) Absolutely, and so let's talk about your career then, kind of full-time and voiceover before the GVAA that would be GVAA. How long were you working and doing voiceover before you decided to start a business and what was it that led you to Actually want to start a business or an online school?
05:45 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Well, so I did voiceover from eight years old all the way through lower school, middle school, high school again. I just did it just here and there. It was never like a big deal, it was just something fun and a cool way to make some money, and we saved it, or my parents would use it for things that I needed. What type of jobs did you do at that age? Oh, that's a really great question.
06:02 The Bay Area they have a wonderful, a very robust toy and game industry up there and so all of my early work was toy work, toys and games. So leapfrog is up there in Oakland, so I did a lot of work for leapfrog. And then I worked for a company quite often called creativity and the music annex and they did a lot of work for just toy companies across the US. And I worked for another company called shoot the moon and they did like invention work where they would Create concepts and then present them to the big toy companies to purchase them. So I did a lot of invention work.
06:34 I did a lot of demo vocals as well, so like they'd want to have a product or a toy where they'd have like a celebrity doing, you know, the official voice of Barbie or whatever singing it. But I was like the guide vocal got, so I would do all the guide vocals and I would go through all the revisions of the song to get it to the final form and then they would give it to the celebrity and they would listen to my voice as their guide vocal before they did the final Things did they ever just pick you instead of the celebrity, or was it always the celebrity was because they wanted the marketing efforts, I guess, of the celebrity voice no, there were a few.
07:06 I actually did get cast and I got to do that, but it was actually fantastic training for animation, because a lot of these toy products are from animation Animation losses, you know, like Elmo and Barbie and Dora, and so I had to do a lot of voice matching, so it was actually great training because I had to mimic these characters and get as close as I could to have the client feel what the product was gonna be like.
07:28 So you got then into character then as well as yeah, I tell people all the time, toy work is fantastic training for animation in terms of just the level of skill required, in terms of what I kind of call vocal gymnastics, mimicry, really wide-ranging characters, really big characters that are very silly. I've been asked to do very, very silly things and again, just very like you know, singing a song in pig or in chicken. I did do a whole song, like it was a whole, like it was great, like we did all the notes were second and then they'd make music out of it and like it was wild, like it was just crazy stuff sometimes, and so there was just already a level of silliness that translated so well into animation later, because I was just not shy about You're gonna ask me to do some crazy thing.
08:17 I'm like yeah, sure.
08:17 - Anne (Host) All right, let's go. How do you embody the pig singing oh God, is that work? How do you get yourself into that character? Absolutely, I can totally see that as Helping you and also why you're so successful as a character actress today.
08:31 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Thank you. Actually, one of the areas of animation I've really started transferring in more lately in past year or two, has been creature work and it's been like gibberish, kind of sure, or emotive, like animals or like mystical pets or things that are just like you know just where it's just there's no words, but it's just an emotional performance where you can hear a message but there's no words to it. Sure, very freeing art form. That again, you have to be willing to just let whatever come out of your mouth, right.
09:04 - Anne (Host) Absolutely Come out of your mouth and that's been really cool, so I love that and I would imagine that that also allowed you to really delve into a lot of different ranges for your vocal Performances as well, because I know for a fact that you did a lot of little girl baby voices for the toys and so now, I guess, evolving into creature work, you get to do all sorts of ranges and I always think that vocal placement and understanding where sounds are coming from and where your Voice is coming from is so important in delivering different performances.
09:33 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Well, I originally started as little girl stuff that was on all this really cute. You know I gotta get my game down if I'm gonna do that. I started with just little girl stuff all the time, and then I just got younger and younger and younger. I Went into the baby stuff and that turned into you know, you know whatever, just really crazy. So yeah, I don't know, it just kind of evolved. People just kept asking me to go higher and higher and I was like, okay, now what about lower and lower?
10:10 Yeah, you know, we've done that too as my voice is matured, did get lower, yeah, like, so now I'll do stuff more, like down here yeah, you know, it's like my more big girl voice and then when to get really crazy, like we'll do weird stuff like that, that's awesome.
10:28 - Anne (Host) I know that I fully have to take advantage of my morning voice if somebody wants me at a lower register Right, and then also being able to get yourself down to that place if you can after you've been voicing for hours, that's another skill. That's another skill set. So tell us all about your claim to fame. League of Legends. Was that your first big gig as a character, as a major character?
10:49 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yeah, I would absolutely say so. I think that was in 2009. There were two characters that were introduced in the very beginning, and one, I believe, was rise, and the other one was Annie, and that was me. So a lot of people have a lot of nostalgia for Annie.
11:01 Sure she's also one of the very first characters that you get when you play, and so she's again nostalgia. She's one of the first characters that you get to play with, so a lot of people have a very attachment to her, and there's also an enormous statue of Annie and a moomoo at Riot Games, which is amazing. That blew my mind the first time I saw, but, yes, that was definitely the first big thing, but when it was done, it was nothing, it was not a known game.
11:24 It was an unknown game. I was one of the first two people to do it and so, wow, I did it and promptly forgot about it, never heard anything about it again. Yeah, because I didn't know that it had become anything. And they give us code names. I didn't even know the name of the game.
11:37 - Anne (Host) Oh, okay, yes, so you didn't even know what game, and so when it came out, did you know that had to come out?
11:42 - Cristina Milizia (Host) No idea, no idea. I didn't know until I met my husband and that was in 2012, so it was like three years later, and he actually worked at Riot Games at the time, working on League of Legends, and we were on our first date. And I laughed and he said your voice sounds really familiar. Oh my gosh, how do I?
12:00 - Anne (Host) not know this story, Cristina, I should know this story.
12:04 - Cristina Milizia (Host) It was part of the magic of our first date. And he was like your voice sounds really familiar If you've heard anything for Riot Games. And I was like I don't know, let me check my resume. And I'm like looked and I was like yeah, I'm some character named Annie and a moomoo, and I pronounced it and he was like your Annie and I was like yeah, and then he told me he's like your voice is famous all over the world and I was like that character really didn't.
12:27 - Intro (Announcement) Wow, you really didn't know.
12:29 - Cristina Milizia (Host) No, and I thought he was just like blowing smoke.
12:31 - Anne (Host) Yeah, I thought he was just trying to like Cause first date.
12:32 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yeah, yeah, I thought he was like trying to butter me up.
12:35 - Anne (Host) Or like.
12:36 - Cristina Milizia (Host) I thought maybe he had a small cult following somewhere like you know something? And he was like no, go, look it up.
12:42 - Anne (Host) And I was like and so it never occurred to you to look it up, because you weren't necessarily, let's say, a gamer at the time or you were on to other roles or what happened, just probably forgot about it.
12:53 - Cristina Milizia (Host) I didn't even know the name of the game, right.
12:55 - Intro (Announcement) So I didn't even know what to look for.
12:57 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yeah, like they didn't tell you later. So I knew I was someone called Annie, and a Moomoo is more specific. But again, there are so many games that you do and then they just either don't become anything or they're small. And you know I wasn't doing big big games at that time. You know I would get and I was doing smaller more mobile games, toys. I wasn't used to anything going on a very large scale. So that was, yes, definitely my very first big thing that I didn't even know had become a big thing until I met my husband. And that's been. The funniest part is that my laugh is Annie's laugh, just higher pitched.
13:27 And one of my favorite moments ever is that I was at the airport getting off a flight. I was just in the airport and I laughed about something and then all of a sudden I hear this person and they're all Annie, annie. I love it, annie. And they just are running around the airport Like we see this person running trying to find her. Like Annie.
13:48 - Anne (Host) Like I was like. Did you answer yes?
13:51 - Cristina Milizia (Host) I said legal legends, annie. They were like yes, and they were like you're Annie. And then we had to like sit down and have a conversation and I had never been recognized by my laugh at an airport. It just blew my mind and so that was like how you knew you were kind of famous, but it's fun because it's just the voice, like if I hadn't laughed no one would know, and that was like my big, like celebrity moment, right, it felt like I felt important.
14:14 - Anne (Host) Well, that was the beginning of them, right, and I know how hard you've worked. I mean, having known you like literally I met you, I think, right after you got married, like maybe a year after you got married, and so we have known each other for 10 years and I know how hard you have worked to just make a space and to really claim your talents, which I always knew were amazing in the animation space, and you've gone on to these amazing roles. What was your evolution for that? Like, talk about your ethic, because one thing before I talk about your entrepreneurial ethic and getting into GVAA was you were focused. I remember you saying you were just focused on wanting to really do well in animation, so talk to us a little bit about that.
14:58 - Cristina Milizia (Host) I think I had been doing toys for so many years. At that point I had literally done toy work for every company in the US and the skill set was so close to animation. But the truth of the matter is that toy work doesn't pay very well and it's completely non-union. I believe and it was then as well A lot of it was non-union and it's not a robust industry. They don't make a lot of money and that's why you see a lot of toy companies branching into animation in order to survive. You know, like Mattel, having to go into animation now even live action films that was a big change in the industry is because kids didn't want toys anymore.
15:35 - Anne (Host) They wanted iPhones they wanted all of them and technology Right exactly To survive they had to evolve with technology. That makes a lot of sense actually.
15:42 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yeah. So toy work really just it was not high paying work, even though it was fun. Also, toy work is not, in terms of acting, nearly as demanding or deep. It's fun, it's great, it's educational, it's cute, but you really have most like can you find the red ball? Great job, you know, it's not like meteor rolls with deep acting, in-depth acting, yeah, yeah. And so I knew that vocally I could do it, and so I just made this resolution that I was going to work for Disney, cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and I was like and your overnight success took how long?
16:16 - Anne (Host) Because I'm always about the, my overnight success took at least 10 years.
16:19 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Right, well, I arrived in LA in 2012. And I don't think I booked my first animation job until probably 2016, 2015, 2016. And that was the beginning.
16:31 - Anne (Host) So it took a good three years three or four years before I really actually started working in and you had a great agent at the time which I think had a lot of faith and belief in you and I think I would say fairly significant in terms of your growth in that area. Would you say that?
16:47 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yeah, no, I had a wonderful agent who believed in me and actually went with him from one agency to another agency that had more animation connections and we had an honest conversation and he told me. He said you know, honestly, at the other agency you weren't making me any money, he said. But he said I feel like it's because you weren't getting the animation shots that you should be getting.
17:05 - Intro (Announcement) You got it the opportunities.
17:06 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yeah, and that has to do with the relationship that the agents have with the animation studios, and so when he took me to AVO with him, he said I think you and Sandy are going to do really well and Sandy is one of the best animation agents in the country, and that's when things just exploded for me.
17:23 - Anne (Host) But what a credit to what we're always telling voice actors and voice talent is to really develop those relationships with your agents and how they can really help you to blossom, and that two of you working together can really help to move careers forward. And it's so important because maybe had you not had that good of a relationship, you wouldn't have sat down and had that talk and you wouldn't have moved over to a different agency. That gave you different opportunities. So I love that you said that, so let's continue to talk around. That time you probably also had the idea for the GVAA. So your little entrepreneurial mind was like, okay, I don't have enough on my plate, but let's do something else, right?
18:03 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Well, I think I actually started GVAA sooner than that.
18:05 - Anne (Host) I started GVAA.
18:07 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Was it 2010? No, it was like 2013, I think. Okay, okay, 2013, 2014,. It was before I started booking a lot in animation. I was coaching because I had coached for many years at Voice One in San Francisco Toys and Games and that's because I had also worked as a casting director for a production company for Toys and Games, and so I was not only an actor for it, I did casting. So I taught classes for Elaine Clark at Voice One, and so I was taking some private students and I was getting these students who had just been put through well, I don't know how to call it, but a demo mill or these weekends where they're like become a voice actor in a weekend and make your demo and people who had invested large amounts of money and were completely unprepared and they didn't understand why they weren't booking.
18:51 And I was seeing it more and more and it was so devastating to me. And I remember one man in particular. He had come to me, had spent like $5,000 or something on all his demos in a new website and he was like I don't know why I'm not booking. And I listened to his stuff and he had a list. He had a speech impediment nothing that's gonna ruin everything that can be corrected and things can be worked on. But nobody said anything to him, you know, and I had a list growing up and it's something I had to work on. It's not like the end of your life if that happens, but it does need to be addressed because you will book more if you don't have one in certain areas you know, for your own narration and that's just what it is.
19:28 And he was so devastated he had no idea that he had a lisp and he was so sad at the end of that call and then I was so angry that somebody had done this. And that's when I was like I'm going to start. You know, I knew all these wonderful coaches from Voice One. I knew Elaine Clark and David Rosenthal and Doug Honoroff again, fantastic coaches and I said there are great coaches out there. There needs to be a resource, there needs to be a place where people can access quality coaches that are not going to lie to them, that are going to give them, you know, the real information they need to succeed. And that's when I started that and David Rosenthal reached out to me and said you wanted to be a part of it and we shared the same dream and then we just took off together and he was wonderful because, again, I was only like 28 at the time You're like 12?.
20:18 I'm sorry she was so young, I was little. I mean, you know, it's not that little, I was 28, maybe 29.
20:26 - Anne (Host) I just jest, but you were very young and very ambitious and I remember when I met you. Do you remember how we met, how we got connected? Oh my gosh, I don't. Somehow the name Dave Kovosie, right? Oh yeah, doesn't that just like, comes to mind. I believe that he introduced us via email and we met probably 2013 somewhere along, when you first began GVAA and bosses out there, if you did not know, I was a coach for GVAA in the very beginning and loved, loved, loved my experience, worked with amazing people Cristina, of course, and David and really I saw the whole online school blossom, and so I love Cristina.
21:05 When we would work together I mean you in the true spirit of entrepreneurship, right, you were willing to learn as you went, you were willing to try things, you were willing to listen to the people that you believed in that worked for you and would ask advice and literally built that from the ground up yourself. I'm going to say you know, along with, probably, david, but I think in the very beginning, it was all you really trying to create something for the good of the community, which is something that I love, and I was very proud to work for GVAA and it was my honor to. Whenever you would ask me a question, you know like, hey, what do you think about this? Or what do you think about this? And I also remember the rate guide, which is so instrumental. I mean, we're talking, you're a pioneer woman. I was considered, elaine Clark, a pioneer woman as well.
21:54 - Cristina Milizia (Host) She was really one of my biggest inspirations for doing it.
21:57 - Anne (Host) She's wonderful. She's absolutely wonderful, and I like to consider myself a bit of a pioneer myself.
22:01 but also just for you to be able to say, look, this is what's needed in the community, this is a resource that's needed, and then to evolve that into a school where you hired. I mean, literally, you were still a voice actor and you literally were running a business. You were hiring people, you were paying people, you established an online school, which, at the time, was not something that existed, and there was coaches that were out there, but there was no real website out there. I remember where you could actually go and say, oh, I want this coach or I want to learn this and let me pay for it here, or let me do this here. And so everything was advanced for its age in 2013, just because it didn't exist before. And so you I consider to be one of the pioneers of those technologies, of having online schools and having them be successful, something that people can trust, and then I mean, let alone, the rate guide. Let's talk about, first of all, what were your challenges in building GVAA, and then what was it that led to the evolution?
23:05 - Cristina Milizia (Host) of the rate guide. I think in the very beginning it was actually Jonah Rosenthal. David Rosenthal's son was one of the very first people who helped me put together, and a wonderful woman as well who was an assistant to me, just putting in just all the content, building the website, building, you know, all of that stuff, and then David Rosenthal, of course, as well, through every aspect of it, and that was just getting again all the content in there, organizing everything. How were we going to do all of it? And again, the biggest motivation was just I felt like there was just this tremendous social injustice, you know, and I wanted to protect people Because, again, I'd also grown up very poor and it really bothers me when people are being taken advantage of. It's so wrong. So, yes, and we definitely were one of the very first, and David actually had something called online voiceover coach.
23:49 He had also started going in that direction, which was one of the reasons why, when we kind of merged our ideas, he already was right there with the mentality of how we're going to do this and having you and bringing on all these people that had so much more experience, because I had the original vision but there were so many people that were aligned with that vision and had more life experience, more experience, coaching.
24:10 - Anne (Host) And I had run VOPEAPs as well. So I had run some online things educationally based, and I had also worked for some other institutions, some other coaching institutions, but nothing as large as the GBA, really trying to bring together all different genres and all different coaches.
24:25 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Right. So I got a lot of advice from you, from David, and I think one of the biggest lessons I learned. I think people have this idea of what leadership is you have power and whatever else, and the truth is that leaders eat last. Your job is to serve. Your job is to serve everyone else. You come last, putting their ideas first, listening, staying calm, being humble, trying to keep a cool head and having a larger vision of things. It is not easy to be a leader.
24:53 - Anne (Host) And I think at that point it's very hard and you really have
24:56 to have self-control in terms of emotionally and sorting through everything and you have to have courage, and I love that. You said that it's not about the leader, it's about who they're serving, and you read any good book on leadership and that's like, first and foremost really is the best things you can do as a leader is to put together a team that supports you and that is amazing at what they do and can even be better than you in all those areas, and working together that's what creates a successful business and a successful team together.
25:27 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yep and I asked questions of Elaine. She was very, very helpful. In the beginning I looked up to her very much you, david, a number of our other coaches and because I knew that I had a lot to learn. And again, I had the passion, I had the drive, I had the vision, I had the desire to create this. But you have to reach out to the people to fill in those holes and you can't just try to assume you know how to do it all yourself, because you have to take advantage of the resources around you. So it was a very humbling experience and in the process, you know, it started to do really well.
25:57 We started going to conferences and presenting, which was wonderful, and then at one of the conferences or I remember if it was at the conference or perhaps before, but I had connected with David Tobak and I was mentoring him. He had come to me for some advice. I was either coaching him or mentoring him and he had decided that he wanted to make a little rate card for himself for his website, to kind of just establish his rates, which I thought was very smart. And he showed it to me. And Tobak is excellent with organization, he's very detail-oriented and it was just beautiful, like it was just beautifully laid out and I was like this is fantastic.
26:30 I was like this is great and I was just like I suddenly had this vision of doing this on a much larger scale. And there was a reason for this too. And I had actually just had an experience, not long before this happened, where I had been hired for an animation show, where I found out later that they had let go of their cast, that they were paying, I think. It was like I can't remember the exact number but normal animation rate, but non-union and then they had decided to hire all new actors at half the rate and I was one of those actors and this was through an agency.
27:03 - Anne (Host) Wow.
27:04 - Cristina Milizia (Host) And I was just. You know, I was like, oh, that's one of my first animation jobs. I'm so excited, you know, I've been doing this for so long.
27:08 I'm just excited. And then I found out later what had happened, and I didn't even understand really the dynamics of any of this, and that even though I had been hired to be a different character, it was still the fact that they were trying to hold the line of no, this is the rate that we're going to ask for, we're going to walk, and the company was just like well, bye, I'm going to recast.
27:29 And then me being, I had a lot of experience as a voice actor, but I was hired and again I'm just all starry-eyed because it's my first animation job, which just happens to every voice actor. Everybody, you're starry-eyed. Oh my God, it's my first job. That's absolutely what happens.
27:43 - Anne (Host) Yep, and I remember that at the time happening a lot and there being at least the starting of some discussions, because even Facebook groups at that time hadn't really materialized. I know I had one for VOPs, but there weren't like there are today. There weren't groups that could discuss those things, but it was one of the things that people were starting to discuss, including rates. It's one of the reasons why people would say do we publish our rate guides online on our website? That was a big question of the day and I remember there was a discussion about that. But I also then remember, just at the touch, in the beginning of it, when people would talk about oh my gosh, like here are actors trying to stand their ground and get paid a fair rate, and the company just saying, well, that's okay, see ya, and then hiring starry-eyed voice actors half the rate, and I remember that being an issue. And here you go wanting to take a stand about that, and I think that's wonderful.
28:36 - Cristina Milizia (Host) And this was also the time my husband reminded me we were discussing this before I came on today that this was also the time that this was really the rise of the pay to plays. Yes, this was the time when Voicescom and Voice 123, they were just taking over.
28:51 The rates were just plummeting, plummeting, plummeting.
28:56 And so in the midst of all this and I was just watching more and more work go non-union because I'm FICOR, so I see union and non-union work.
29:05 Toy work is exclusively non-union, so I wasn't going to go full union, I was going to be FICOR, so I didn't lose my toy work that I needed at the time, which was my only income aside from my one or two animation jobs which I was starting to get, and I just felt like I was watching my industry fall apart and everything that I had worked hard to try to get out of which was just these little tiny non-union job rates and being taken advantage of many times in my career up until this point.
29:31 And I was like, no, I don't want this to happen to any other talented people that are coming in this, where maybe they have a strong performance background, strong acting background, they're trained opera singer, whatever, and so they do a great job, but they have no idea what they should be paid for that skill set and they're just excited to be on a show, and it happens every day. And so when he showed me this little guide, I was like you know what? This is what we need. We need this for the non-union world. Yeah, absolutely.
30:01 - Anne (Host) And you know, what's funny is that when there was all the discussion about the rate cards like, do we publish our rate cards Everybody at the time was saying, well, okay, what's the benchmark? Is there a benchmark? What should I charge? And especially for all of the non-union stuff that I was doing corporate work, explainer work, e-learning work everybody would say, well, what do you charge? What do you charge? And they'd say, how do we even know what's the benchmark?
30:22 And when we were all back in the day before there was a big band and there was the GVAA rate guide, there was a bunch of us that used to talk to one another and say, well, here is what I charge, but I'm not going to publish it on my website because every job is different. However, it's always good, especially for anybody new, and they still find this to be the case whenever I have a new student and they're like, oh my God, somebody just asked me what I would charge for this e-learning job or for this corporate job and what do I do? And you get into that panic and you have no reference, you have nothing to look at, to even benchmark your pricing on. And I'm so glad that the GVAA rate guard was started because it gave us something other than SAG-AFTRA okay, because SAG-AFTRA is what we were looking at, but SAG-AFTRA didn't have rates for e-learning. Really, it was one of those things where it was just a bunch of us who did a bunch of it and we would talk amongst each other and you were actually asking all those people, including myself, like what do you charge?
31:16 And so it was great. You were able to bring together everybody at the time to really get a good set of data for this rate guide and it literally is iconic now in the industry. I mean, I say this over and over again how many times do people reference the GVAA rate guide? And I am so proud to know you, christine, I'm so proud that you did this back then, knowing it would be a good resource for the community, and it's really just become legendary today. It's epic, it's the GVAA rate guide. I mean, it's literally it's its own entity. Now you know it should have its own website just for the usefulness and functionality.
31:55 - Cristina Milizia (Host) And we have more plans for it.
31:56 And first of all, I just want to say like, too, that a lot of people don't know the original story of the rape guide, and so I was really excited to talk about it with you today, because what happened after Toback showed me that little card, as I said hey, toback, will you please come work with me, work for GVAA. I want to build this for every area of voiceover, because exactly what you said that the union didn't talk about no, I don't think they talk about telephony. They don't know about all of these other areas. And I knew a lot of people. I knew a lot of coaches and I just started making phone calls and I spent a lot of time with you. I spent a lot of time with Josh at GoVoices, eric Shepard at Shepard Agency, wonderful agents and I did actually spend some time with union workers as well who explained their rape structures and I tried to translate it kind of in a non-union format for different areas, and all those people generously gave their time to build this, because we all believed in it.
32:51 - Anne (Host) I remember at the time, we all believed in it and we all said, yes, this is exactly what's needed. This is what's needed in the industry.
32:58 - Cristina Milizia (Host) And there were so many areas, we were like what do we do? If I'm doing an airport announcement, I'm like I have no idea Let me go look.
33:05 I'm being played in a lobby of a dentist's office. I'm like, let me go research that. What if I'm a voice in a card that opens up and sings something? A hallmark card? Right, that's okay. And so we got this barrage of people just asking, and so it was built, and it was so much, so quickly that, unfortunately, I burned out a little bit. Well, I burned out because I was getting emails and messages and messenger notices at all times of day.
33:32 - Anne (Host) Well, at this point, I know as a coach before the GBA rape guide, I know as a coach oh my goodness, when you set your students out into the world of working in voiceover and they've got their coaching, they've got a demo, and then all of a sudden that first job request comes in or how much would it cost they flock to the people like insane and just panic, panic, panic. Oh my God, what do I charge? Oh my God, what do I charge? Oh my God, what do I charge? What do I charge for this? So I know you, on a grand scale, were being barraged, because I was being barraged before the GBA rape guide existed and it became like one of those things where it's like I'd love to help you but I cannot answer you in this next second, right At two in the morning.
34:14 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Yeah, exactly.
34:16 - Anne (Host) And so that's what is so wonderful about having that as a resource and congratulations on that. I mean, really, it's a wonderful, wonderful resource for the community and I'm just so proud to have been a small part of it back in the day and so proud of you and so proud of GVAA and just guys, bosses, this is a bad ass entrepreneur right here. She's a VO boss and you may not even have known that, but I am bringing that to light now and shouting it from the rooftop. So, Cristina, it's been amazing. How can people, if people need to get in touch with you because I know you're coaching a lot now and you're high in demand but how can people get in touch with you if they need to?
34:53 - Cristina Milizia (Host) So I am very excited to be coaching again. I took a long break to focus on animation, but now I am back and I feel like I have so much more information to share, which is really exciting. You can find me at globalvoiceacademycom. That's the website. If you look up GVAA rape guide, it's all connected on there too. If that's already in your normal search engine, it's all connected. You'll see under one-on-one coaching that I'm there.
35:16 I focus on animation, character work in general, toys, video games and career strategy things of that nature, and now that I'm back from my break also, you can expect some really cool stuff that we're going to be doing the rape guide.
35:29 We have plans for adding a whole, much larger non-union animation section very soon, doing research right now on audio description as well, which is a new area that's really exploding as well, and if people do have other areas that they would like to see on the rape guide, you can also reach out to us at globalvoiceacademycom. Let us know if there's stuff missing on there that you'd like to see, because we definitely have big plans to continue growing it. And, as I think it was Tim Friedland who told me or maybe it was at the Navigala that 80% of voiceover work is now non-union. I believe that is yeah, absolutely so. I am as dedicated to this project as ever. I took my little break and now I'm back and I'm here for the community and I want us all to rise and support each other and be able to fight for what we're worth.
36:15 - Anne (Host) So thank you, Cristina, so much for that. It's been an absolute pleasure. I can only hope to have many more conversations with you in the future Me too, for the podcast. And so, bosses, here's your chance to use your voice to make an immediate difference in our world and give back to the communities, just like GVAA and Cristina Malizia have done. Give back to the communities that give to you. Visit 100voiceswhocareorg to commit. And also a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect a network like bosses, like Cristina and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week. I love you, Cristina, and we will see you next week. I love you.
36:53 - Cristina Milizia (Host) Bye.
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