GUEST PANEL #2: JIM BYRNE AND SCOTT McNEIL

Due to the vagaries and conflicts in actors' schedules, the entire
cast is rarely in the recording booth at once. But when they are,
look out. "Recording sessions are a lot like being in the third and
fourth grade," says JB. "It's the creme-de-la-creme of the class
clown crowd," adds SM.

With four characters, does SM ever get confused in the morning?
"All... the... time." he agrees. "The other actors are going, 'Oh
god, it's one of those long Rattrap-Dinobot scenes. We're outta
here'." 

How might you become a voice actor? SM is adamant that *acting* is
primary; his own training was in theatre. "Fundamentally, it's all
about the acting [...] if you can't create a real character, all
you've got is a funny voice." He also insists that a car is
essential. It doesn't have to *run*; but he invents all *his* voice
effects while sitting in it. You can imagine how this might look,
thus: "I *always* get to use the carpool lane, whether I have
passengers or not." Voiceacting is also about combinatorics: two
pitches, plus two orthogonal effects, make eight voices.

Both are very complimentary of Susan Blu's skills as voice
director, and of the maturity (not written just for kids, respect
the audience) of the BW scripts. JB reluctantly admits he's never
seen an episode of BW, and only two of "Highlander" (on which he
plays Joe Dawson, Watcher of Duncan MacLeod). SM follows up: "It's
confession time - I have never seen the original Transformers [...]
well, our stock just went down."

How'd JB get into acting? The day before he started highschool, he
broke his arm playing football. Since he couldn't engage in sports,
he joined the theatre club. "That's when he discovered," jokes SM,
"there were a lot more girls in the drama club." 

Alas, no; it was an all-boy Jesuit highschool. After that was
summer theatre and so forth. One year the class was taken to
Broadway to see "Dylan," which featured Alec Guiness (old Obi-Wan
Kenobi) saying "I want to be the drunkest man in the world!" It was
than that JB turned to his teacher and said, "This is what I want
to do for a living."

"You want to be the drunkest man in the world?" asks SM innocently.

Both have several funny stories about the industry. One day, SM was
called in to voiceover a TV ad for a major brand of jeans. They
wanted a "Jim Byrne" voice. He walks into the outer office, the
door to the studio opens, and out walks... Jim Byrnes. Punchline:
neither got the job.

They mention that the voice of Tankorr on "Beast Machines" will be
Paul Dobson, Graveheart from "War Planets."