Voice acting

Voice actors in the Sierra Leonean radio soap opera Atunda Ayenda

Mel Blanc

Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters (including those in feature films, television programs, animated short films, and video games) and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.

Performers are called voice actors/actresses, voice artists or simply voice talent, and their roles may also involve singing, although a second voice actor is sometimes cast as the character's singing voice. Voice artists are also used to record the individual sample fragments played back by a computer in an automated announcement. At its simplest, this is just a short phrase which is played back as necessary, e.g. the Mind the gap announcement introduced by London Underground in 1969. In a more complicated system such as a speaking clock, the voice artist usually doesn't actually record 1440 different announcements, one for each minute of the day, or even 60 (one for each minute of the hour), instead the announcement is re-assembled from fragments such as "minutes past" "eighteen" and "pm." For example, the word "twelve" can be used for both "Twelve O'Clock" and "Six Twelve." For some automated applications, such as London Underground's Mind the gap announcement, the sound of a voice artist may be preferred over synthesized voices because the human voices sound more natural to the listener.

A list of voice acting by one voice actor, one director, or on one subject, is sometimes called a voxography.

United States

Broadcast media

For live-action production, voice acting often involves reading the parts of computer programs (Douglas Rain; Majel Barrett), radio dispatchers (Shaaron Claridge), or characters who never actually appear on screen but who give instructions by telephone (John Forsythe in Charlie's Angels), or mailed recording (Bob Johnson in Mission: Impossible). "Stunt double" voice actors are sometimes employed; if a voice actor or actress loses his or her voice, someone who sounds similar can step in. For example, when Jeremy Irons' vocal cords became strained during the recording of The Lion King song "Be Prepared", Jim Cummings was called in to finish the song.

It is not unusual to find among the ranks of voice actors people who also act in live-action film or television, or on the stage (see e.g., J. Scott Smart, an "old time radio" actor). For those actors, voice acting has the advantage of offering acting work without having to bother with makeup, costuming, lighting, and so on. An occasional advantage is the fact that through voice acting, an actor can reprise a role that he has played in live action but would be otherwise too aged to portray. An example of this is Walter Koenig in Star Trek New Voyages who reprises his role as Lt. Pavel Chekov.

Female voice actors in male roles

A common practice in animation is to cast a woman to play the role of a young boy. On The Simpsons, for example, Nancy Cartwright plays Bart Simpson and several other juvenile males. Other voice actresses who would fit this criterion are Debi Derryberry who voices Jimmy Neutron on The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius or Tara Strong, who voices Timmy Turner, Poof, and other young boys on The Fairly OddParents (among other shows), and continues with Regina King as the voice of Huey and Riley Freeman on the Adult Swim show The Boondocks, and Alanna Ubach who voiced Manny Rivera/El Tigre on El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. This casting practice goes back to the early 1930s with actresses such as Mae Questel providing the voices of various male babies and children in Fleischer Studios cartoons, and continues to this very day. June Foray, even as a senior citizen, can still faithfully voice Rocket J. Squirrel. Casting adult women for these parts can be especially useful if an ad campaign or a developed series is expected to run for several years, for while the vocal characteristics of a male child actor would change over time, the voice of an adult female will not.

There are also less common instances in which a production has a predominantly female voice cast, some of the actors portraying male characters. The best known example(s) would be Rugrats and it's spinoff, All Grown Up (both shows had an all-female voice cast).

Notable exceptions to using women to voice young boys' roles are the Peanuts animated specials and films, in which boys were actually cast to read the boys' lines (e.g., Charlie Brown, Linus, Schroeder). In South Park, the authors Trey Parker and Matt Stone are also voice actors for most male roles, especially the boys: Parker voices Stan, Cartman and others while Stone is the voice of Kyle, Kenny, Butters and others. South Park kids' voices are pitched up a little in order to seem more "childish". In addition, kindergarten kids on the show are voiced by actual young children for realism. Jason Marsden has portrayed young male.

Rise in use of film actors for voice roles

For much of the history of North American animation, voice actors had a predominantly low profile as performers, with Mel Blanc the major exception. Other early exceptions include Cliff Edwards in Pinocchio, Edward Brophy in Dumbo and Peggy Lee in Lady and the Tramp. Over time, many movie stars began voice acting in movies, with one of the earliest examples being The Jungle Book, which counted among its cast contemporary stars such as Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, Louis Prima, George Sanders and Sterling Holloway. The film which truly brought about this modern perception, however was Aladdin which was marketed with a noted emphasis on Robin Williams' role, against the actor's own wishes. The success of this film eventually spurred the idea of highlighting the voice actors as stars of a film, this becoming the norm in movie marketing, with a greater focus on hiring Hollywood celebrities for name power, rather than performers with most experience in voice acting, particularly the Toy Story (Tom Hanks and Tim Allen) and Shrek (Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas) franchises. British animation also used big names, most notably Chicken Run (Mel Gibson, Timothy Spall, Jane Horrocks and Miranda Richardson) and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Ralph Fiennes, Liz Smith, Peter Kay and Helena Bonham Carter). By contrast, using anime voice actors as a box office draw was developed far earlier in Japan.

Voice actor Billy West on the problem with the use of celebrities in voice acting.

Some voice actors, such as Billy West, are highly critical of using movie stars for voices in animated features. A particular point of contention is the practice of bringing in veteran voice actors (who are generally capable of greatly altering their voices and inflections in order to create personalities for characters) to read for a part, and then use the recording of the professional voice actor as a guide for the movie star, even though the actual character creation work is being done by the unpaid voice actor. West struck back at this practice in Comic Book: The Movie, in which the entire main cast comprises voice actors, including Jess Harnell, Lori Alan, Daran Norris, Mark Hamill and Tom Kenny. The practice of hiring singers to "fill in" for voice actors in a singing role has also seen change, as both Jeremy Irons and Mel Gibson have done singing in the respective films The Lion King and Pocahontas, rather than have a singer as substitute (However, the former did most of his own singing, but due to straining his vocal cords, he didn't finish; instead, Jim Cummings did his partial singing voice for the rest of the song).

Voice actors for commercials and local television

Voice actors have a relatively small but dedicated fan base, with appearances at large events like Comic-Con International, various anime conventions, and websites dedicated to profiling their work.

Commercials for television and radio are also cast using voice acting agencies. Ernie Anderson was one of radio's most prominent voices throughout the 1970s and 1980s and was heard on radio stations across the United States. While Don LaFontaine filled the category of "The Voice of God" until his death in 2008, Ashton Smith, Howard Parker and Miguel Ferrer provide most of the narration for movie trailers. David Mark was heard around the world for various radio stations and across the country for Fox TV, UPN and ABC TV.

Training and how-to classes

Many VO coaches who have had success in commercial, narration, and animation offer private training, tele-seminars and weekend workshops for both novice and experienced voice actors. However, care should be exercised when looking for such services. A weekend workshop or tele-seminar cannot possibly set forth all the material needed to begin a career in VO. Many of those offering VO training include making a voice demo MP3. If you are encouraged to invest in a demo after a single workshop, be aware that some coaches may be more interested in your money than in your success. Always ask lots of questions and ask to speak to former students. It is extremely rare for anyone to be ready for a demo after a single workshop, even if they have many years of acting experience. When you are ready for your demo, seek out a demo producer who is experienced with producing the type of demo you plan to market and ask to listen to several examples of the work. Learning the art of VO is a process and the longer the training the better the result.

Japan

Main article: Voice acting in Japan

Japanese voice actors largely mirror that of their Western counterparts: performing roles in anime, audio dramas and video games, performing voice-overs for dubs of non-Japanese movies, and providing narration to documentaries and similar programs. However, because the animation industry in Japan is so prolific, voice actors in Japan are able to have full-time careers as voice-over artists. Japanese voice actors are able to take greater charge of their careers than in other countries. Japan also has the institutions to support the career path, with around 130 voice acting schools and troupes of voice actors that work for a specific broadcast company or talent agency. They often attract their own appreciators and fans who watch shows specifically to hear their favorite actor or actress.

Many Japanese voice actors frequently branch into music, often singing the opening or closing themes of shows in which their character stars, or become involved in non-animated side projects such as audio dramas (involving the same characters in new storylines) or image songs (songs sung in character that are not included in the anime but further develop the character).

Voice acting in video games

Across many of the main game manufacturing countries, in the USA, UK and Japan, there are actors who lend their voices to characters in games and have often made a career out of it. Their names have sometimes been linked to a particular character they have voiced. Among the many noted video game voice actors and actresses are Maaya Sakamoto (the Japanese voice for the Final Fantasy XIII character Lightning), Tatsuhisa Suzuki (the voice of Noctis Lucis Caelum in Final Fantasy Versus XIII), Troy Baker (English Snow Villiers, Joel, Batman in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes), Steve Downes and Jen Taylor (Master Chief and Cortana from the Halo series), Nolan North (Nathan Drake from the Uncharted games and Desmond Miles from the Assassin's Creed game series), Liam O'Brien (the voice of Caius Ballad in Final Fantasy XIII-2 and War in Darksiders), and Jonell Elliott (the voice of Lara Croft from 1999-2003). Other actors more linked with the film or television industry have also voiced video game characters. These actors include Mark Hamill (The Joker, Wolverine and the Watcher from Darksiders), Michael Dorn (various characters from World of Warcraft and Gatatog Uvenk from Mass Effect 2) and Claudia Black (Chloe Frazer from the second and third entries in the Uncharted series).

See also

• Audiobook
• List of voice actors
• Voice-over
• Voice acting in South Korea
• National Audio Theatre Festival
• Adventures in Voice Acting
• The Magic Behind the Voices

External links

• readthrough.com performs scripts with the help of voice actors everywhere
• www.thevoicerealm.com Online reference material for professional voice over talent