VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[craigcrumpton]

...segways into commentary on the industry and a plug for a group everyone here should consider joining:

http://voiceactors.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/celebrity-voice-test/
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Publisher: Voice Actors in the News
Host: Viva VO Atlanta! (on VU and Facebook for VO peeps in the Southeast US)

[Philip Banks]

Join a group with the specific goal of telling other people, professional people, experienced people how to spend their money? I honestly believe it smacks of "please don't use famous people WE NEED THE MONEY,THEY DON'T!"

The real campaign should be against the low-ball pay to play sites as they are a real threat to YOU, the non-union voices too and the voices without ISDN and the fatblokes what lives in Portgordon and don't get me started on Border Collies.

If you look at Voiceoveruniverse, Bobbin wrote a piece about thinking big. Compulsory reading for anyone who seriously wants to campaign against anyone who they perceive is stealing their apple pie.

By the way, the voice recognition? I got one, Sir Sean Connery. I was bound to get that one as I worked with him a couple of years ago. He mentioned he was going from the VO session to a council estate in Glasgow to steal a pensioner's coal.

[Bruce]

Producers use famous actors because to become a famous actor you (usually) have to be a really good actor. Most of us don't recognize who most of these voice talent are when we're just watching the tube, but we connect with a read that is extremely natural and has just the right emotion for the message.

If we want more of this kind of work we have to learn to be better actors and to leave Mr. or Ms. ANNOUNCER locked up in a box from time to time.

Folks who are trying to lobby producers to use fewer famous names are misdirected and wasting their time. I mean really, out of the hundreds and hundreds of people who read national spots every year, how many are "celebrities"? A tiny percentage. Get a life. Take an acting class or two...do some theater.

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

[Philip Banks]

Thank you Bruce. Beautifully articulated.

[Mike Harrison]

Bravo, Bruce.

Time is better spent becoming better.
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Mike
Male Voice Over Talent
I have taken leave of my sensors.

[Deirdre]

The other bonus of producers using "celebrity voices" is that more projects get greenlit. If there's a star attached to an idea, studios are much more likely to throw money behind it, and while that means Julia Roberts and not a "real voice actor" gets the lead in a cartoon, there's an opportunity for us to get several days' work doing additional voices and looping.
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DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

[paddyo]

Well said Bruce. Thank you.

Paddyo
www.thepatrickoconnor.com
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Proud member of F.U.F.F.

[Philip Banks]

One of the worst dramas shown on British TV was made because the writer FIRST pitched the script to Helen Mirren who agreed to do it and then he took it to the TV company.

[Lee Gordon]

I recognized 5 out of the 10 (although I "spaced" on Kevin Spacey's name for a few moments). I have to admit that I'm such an old fart, I didn't recognize two of the names even after they were revealed.

I think this whole "Give Voiceover Jobs to Voiceoverists" movement was born partially out of the frustration of seeing, on the one hand, widespread downward pressure on the pay scale of VO work and, on the other, movie & TV stars voicing spots for what have to be huge multiples of what we ordinary mortals are offered. Not that one has anything to do with the other.

Personally, I have no problem hearing a big name doing a VO -- it's not as if that gig would otherwise have gone to me -- but I do find it bothersome when I hear one in which the celebrity, possibly regarding the craft of voiceoverism to be beneath him, mails in the performance.
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Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

[craigcrumpton]

Thank you, Lee. I appreciate your comment and agree completely.

And while I would agree to a degree with Bruce that "Producers use famous actors because to become a famous actor you (usually) have to be a really good actor," that does not automatically make them good voice actors. I could cite several examples of celebrity voice casting where they failed on several levels, and perhaps you haven't heard Bob Bergen's anecdote about a certain "A-lister" who felt he had to run around in the studio while recording -- away from the microphone -- because his character was running in the script because that's what he considered to be "real acting."

And I defintely don't agree that telling anyone to "get a life" over this campaign is "beautifully articulated." If you want to know how making a public statement like that can be taken as a huge insult by a large group of people, ask Bill Shatner.

I'll add that I'm not fond of the group's "mission statement". I think it needs some fine tuning. I believe studios and casting directors need to be more aware of their intended audience and offer consideration for actual voice actors and not favor on-camera actors for their assumed box office potential, and I believe this campaign is a good way to bring attention to that.

As I've said on a number of times this topic has come up, I don't mind celebrity voice casting if it's a quality performance and a good fit for the character/spot.

And the rest of what I have to say will be familiar to anyone who's read my blog in the last year.

Celebrity voice casting in animation goes all the way back to "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" -- Walt Disney cast many radio and stage stars in the studio's animated films during his lifetime, and their names were used in promotions as well.

But I think the 1986 "Transformers" animated movie was the first genuine case of a studio deliberately casting celebrity voices and using them for marketing purposes. And I believe Disney began to give more importance to celebrity voice casting starting in the late 80s with "Oliver and Company" (1988).

Other animation studios attempting to compete with Disney took it one step further and made the celebrity voice casts a huge deal and a crucial part of their marketing campaigns.

It bothers me that studios give more attention to casting a celebrity voice for a character than they do whether or not that celebrity is the best fit for that character. Audiences don't care as much about hearing celebrity voices in animation as the studios assume they do. Most of them are produced as kid-friendly movies to begin with, and kids could care less -- they just want to see an entertaining film. And at best adults are only marginally curious to hear celebrity voice performances.

And there are plenty of examples where studios banked on celebrity voice casting to ensure box office success and failed, like Meet The Robinsons, Chicken Little, Titan A.E., The Road to El Dorado and The Tale of Despereaux.

Pixar's the only studio that's been able to find a good balance because they have such a high standard for characterization and storytelling. And if casting an "A-lister" like Tom Hanks or Tim Allen might actually help put butts in the theater seats, great, but that's obviously not their primary focus and consideration or else they would have George Clooney voicing Slinky Dog in "Toy Story" instead of the late Jim Varney, or one of the Jonas Brothers voicing Russell in "Up" instead of a complete unknown like Jordan Nagai.

This has become a heated topic among fans with recent animated superhero films from DC Comics and Warner Bros Animation like "Superman: Doomsday", "Superman: Brainiac Attacks," and the upcoming "Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths." The former two had some dramatic casting changes that fans were united in their criticisms for. For the latter there is already resentment from fans for recasting actors whom fans feel have given the definitive vocal performances for such iconic characters as Batman (Kevin Conroy), Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown), and Superman (Tim Daly). Instead, the studio has opted for casting names with more notariety like Billy Baldwin as Batman, Chris Noth as Lex Luthor and Mark Harmon as Superman.

I'll reserve my judgement for the actual release, but it's disappointing to me that Conroy and Brown weren't asked to reprise the roles they have performed so well for the last two decades and that the studio has apparently favored "celebrities" over them.

But at the core of celebrity voice casting -- what bothers me the most is that veterans of the voice acting industry are often not even given opportunity to audition for principal roles in animated features. Instead, they're mostly relegated to recording scratch tracks, voice matching, walla and incidentals.

That's why I support a group like this. It has nothing to do with "whining" about money.
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Publisher: Voice Actors in the News
Host: Viva VO Atlanta! (on VU and Facebook for VO peeps in the Southeast US)

[paddyo]

[Bruce]

I'm sorry, but anyone or any group of people who feels the need to start a big campaign with a mission statement along the lines of:

"Don't hire those people because...well, even though they're really, really good at what they do, you should ignore them and only think of us regular folk!"

is misdirecting their efforts. Our job, in my judgment, is to keep working at getting better at what we do so we might join the ranks of the highest paid talent, and not to carp about those who are talented and lucky enough to make it to the Big Time first.

I also think there's a big line between famous actors voicing commercials and voicing animation. The movies often tout their actors so you frequently know who you're hearing, but they almost never tout their commercial voices so the average listener has no idea who's reading.

I did scratch tracks for Fox Animation's Anastasia and Titan A.E. when they were creating the films here in Phoenix, and I did a really good job IMHO, but they chose someone else for the final versions. Was I little tweaked and disappointed? Sure. But it's their production, their decision, their dime, not mine.

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

[Lee Gordon]

[Bruce]

[todd ellis]

i hate the other guy.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?