If you are a fan of anime, then you've probably heard Todd Haberkorn's voice voicing some of your favorite characters. Some of his more popular voice over work on anime includes Keroro on Sgt. Frog, Takashi Sakuma on Summer Wars and Italy on Hetalia: Axis Powers. Besides voice over, he is also an actor in front of the camera and on stage for theatre productions. You can say Todd is a jack of all trades when it comes to acting. We talk about what drew him into becoming an actor, his thoughts on the current state of the anime industry and his amazing fan club, Team Haberkorn, among other topics.
Audio version of this exclusive interview is below for your listening pleasure. Below the audio player is text version of the full interview for our readers…
What drew you into becoming an actor?
Todd: It's something that I'm not really sure. I think about that every now and then and what led me to that path. I grew up with television. I grew up with movies. Even though I was very young and I didn't realize all the different aspects of the making of a production. I guess it was something that kind of just sort became engrained in me and felt comfortable. So when I discovered stage and theatre and things like that, it just felt like a natural progression. I don't really know why people choose the things they want to be. I think it's just like a good fit. You can wear a size 12 shoe and one just fits more (snuggly) than the other. I had a lot of jobs when I was a kid and from those jobs I can tell when it was like, "Oh man, it's only been an hour, it feels like it's been 8." When any time I did something with entertainment, I could do it all day. I could be on a film set for 19 hours. Yeah, I'm exhausted but I'd want to come back and do it again the next day.
Can you tell us about your production company, Out of the Office? How did this get started?
Todd: We did projects to produce things like commercials and films, things of that nature and I would hire my buddies and I would continually hire them and they would do the same. We were all kind of doing almost essentially the same thing just separately and one day I said, "Why won't we just combine and come together." So, we combined forces and it kind of just became my own little brain child because the other members of the group were already kind of engrained into doing their own thing to make their livelihood so coming together under one Umbrella Corporation didn't fit as well into their life styles so then it kind of just became my own thing and I'd still hire them for projects. The idea behind it was to have something where all my buddies that were proficient in different areas of production can come together and we can make projects. But, working with voice over and on camera just as my own entity, it's a full time gig. It's kind of like with my theatre company that I had, there's just not time to devote to that to make it what it needs to be to be competitive, which is a good problem to have. It means I'm working a lot and able to do my thing so I guess if we start seeing a lot more Out Of The Office stuff it means that Todd Haberkorn stuff is taking a back seat which I don't know how I would feel about it but who knows.
For your role as Firo in the anime Baccano, which has more of an American tone, did you find it easier to prepare for and work on?
Todd: I based the accent on the New York side of my family. It was just about being around some of my grandparents and listening to them because they lived in New York forever and ever so it was kind of a tribute to them. I don't even think they are aware of it. That's an accent I've been able to play with off and on for years so I was glad that I finally got a gig in an anime where I can actually use it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvEZBbJ_dY8
Your voice definitely caters to specific types of voice roles. Do you ever get afraid of being typecast and not being able to try anything new as a result?
Todd: Sometimes I get afraid of that and there are certainly roles that I've done a bunch of but first and foremost I'm just really glad to continue to work. That's my thing, I don't seek out roles that are the same, I just seek out work. When I do roles that are similar in anime, for instance, it really has to do with the fact that that's just how I got cast in that particular situation. I always enjoy the opportunity to try something new and get out of my comfort zone and I've had the pleasure of doing that in anime and in film and on stage. I'm grateful for that and I hope that pattern continues. It's comfortable to stay in the same groove but it's more exciting to be able to bust out and do something that you don't know how people are going to take it.
You are a part of the web-series Star Trek Continues. How did you land the role of Mr. Spock? It's not every day that you get to play such an iconic character.
Todd: Vic (Mignogna) approached me and we had worked on a couple other Star Trek properties before and he approached me about starting his own and mentioning that he wanted me to be his Spock because of our dynamic of being friends outside of anime and working on productions. I respected his abilities and his knowledge about Star Trek. He's an encyclopedia. Nobody knows more about the world of Trek than he does. I knew I was going to be in good hands. So, I had to send in an audition. So he sent out scenes of the original series. What I did was I recorded them in costume and some crude makeup on green screen and I inserted myself into the original series footage so when William Shatner was talking and it would cut to Spock, it would be me responding to him. He liked that and got a kick out of it and it kind of led to the role from there.
With Bandai Entertainment discontinuing sales of blu-rays, DVDs, mangas and novels, where do you think the anime industry stands at this point? Do you believe it is still going strong?
Todd: I think it's got similar challenges to a lot of forms of entertainment in the sense that we are in such a surplus of entertainment. There is so many options out there that it's very difficult for anything whether it's an anime or a $250 million dollar movie to get people's attention. Now anime has its own problems. Now the convention appearances and conventions are growing but the anime industry is almost in a way shrinking and it's very strange to think about that. Hopefully the anime industry will continue to be around but the problem is at the end of the day, at least from my aspect of it, we are kind of just putting a different coat of paint on original material that is already out there so there is unfortunately there is only so far it can go. Whereas if you are dealing with an original property like Star Wars: Clone Wars, it has a little more wiggle room and Western animation is a little more main stream for this culture. When you take anime, what's funny is that there's much more depth in anime than American animation but it's made for a different culture and we're simply taking it into our culture and just putting a little bit of a spin on it by dubbing it and putting out there for everyone to see. There are different sensibilities in Japan. Unfortunately, the majority of the US, at least from what I've seen, are very resistant to change in that direction. They want cartoons that are one dimensional where it's like good guy versus bad and that's it. When you bring these anime that has depth and levels and different story arcs where when people die, they actually die. It deals with loss and death and rebirth and things like that, it's a head scratcher for people. You add to the fact that the industry doesn't have a whole bunch of funding. It's kind of an uphill battle. I'm surprised that it's lasted as long as it has and I'm happy to be a part of it but I do recognize the difficulty of that aspect of the industry.
You are also a musician. Tell us, how has music changed your life? Any influences in music, both past and present that have helped you build the kind of music you want to create?
Todd: Music's a tricky beast for me because I want to create it and I have been playing music for a while but it's only recently that I've tried to write more. There's such good music out there and so many great artists and there's also a lot of bad music out there and I think that's with anything. But right now, I feel like a lot of the R&B and even the mainstream rock and stuff, when you listen to what those songs are about, they're very shallow. It's about the beat. It's about the rhythm of the song. That's kind of the listening generation we're in right now whereas the 60's and 70's, the lyrics were very thought provoking. I think we're going through a shift of how music is absorbed by the public right now. For me, writing music is about an idea that begins in my head and I try to tell a journey about something that means something to me. It's a song that I'm putting out there for everyone to examine; it's got little secret messages in there that only I know. It's a weird, groovy thing to have a song out there that everyone can hear and everyone can look at the lyrics and everyone can see but there's still code in there that only I know.
Tell us about Team Haberkorn. How did this team come about?
Todd: I was approached about that a couple years ago about doing a fan club and talked with a couple of people about it and I had never thought in that direction before. A buddy of mine mentioned that we should make it a thing that supports charity. I was excited to do that. I didn't realize how much of a full time job it would be. It really takes up a lot of focus and time to make it happen. It's all in the name of trying to give fans a different kind of access of me and to support some good causes. We do things that no other fan club that I know of really does out there with contests and original content that we have, Korntent if you will. We have a lot of cool ideas that we hope to get out there. I see everything that's put on the site. No changes are made to the site without me knowing about it. I try as hard as I can to make sure that I have a hand in everything that happens there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esFF68wZGG4
Do you have any favorite Asian films you would like to share with us?
Todd: I'm going to expand that with just foreign films in general. A lot of foreign films that I've seen, especially when I was young, it's kind of the same thing I was saying about anime earlier, there's just a different sensibility in making a film outside of the US. When you take a look at something like, (Russian films) Night Watch and Day Watch, those movies have an imagination in them that takes you out of the film almost because it's so imaginative. I think that's a good thing. From the camera angles to how the scenes unfold, it's really astonishing to seek other cultures view on filmmaking. There are a lot of good foreign films and there are a lot of bad ones.
What words of encouragement would you like to say for those who strive to achieve success?
Todd: The biggest thing I try to keep in mind is that at the end of the day, when people say "mind your own business", I take that to mean you run your own business. As an actor especially, my instruments and the tools I use are my brain and my voice and my body so that's my business and I have to take care of that. If you think about a big corporation like Best Buy that has a legion of employees and board members working every single day to make that machine go, it's that much harder for one person to do that for themselves. People should keep that in mind for a couple of reasons; one because almost anything is possible if you put your mind. I don't want to say anything is because I can't levitate off the bed and float off down the hall, that (isn't) going to happen. Almost anything is possible if you put true effort towards it. I think that helps people give them a sense of accountability. When you run your own business, you are aware of the choices that you make. When people are looking to be successful, you got to be mindful of every choice that you make. I've made some bad decisions in my life and I've made a lot of good ones and that's the one thing that I keep in mind that hopefully helps me be successful.
Want to stay up to date all all the HaberKontent? Visit his cookie crumb trail below:
http://www.teamhaberkorn.com/
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