VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Bob Bergen]

[Dave DeAndrea]

[Lee Gordon]

I posted this on Facebook, but it makes sense to post it here, as well.
Following the Saturday night karaoke at Faffcon 6 in San Antonio, lots of Faffers remained in the hotel lounge, socializing, playing Cards Against Humanity, and otherwise enjoying each others' company, while on the TV screen, an appropriately familiar face appeared.


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Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

[ccpetersen]

Apropos of celebrity narrators, one of the fields I produce for is educational videos for science centers and planetarium theaters. There has been a trend over the past few decades of hiring celebrity narrators for these (if there's budget). Beyond the issue of what the narrator is paid (and the fees range from scale to scale-plus), there's a lot of talk in the community about what a celebrity narrator brings to the table.

It all really depends on who the voice is. For example, we've used several actors from the Star Trek universe, mostly because we think (or hope) that people will associate their space-based coolness with the topics being discussed in the productions. In one show, we had a section where the narrative was mainly documentary, describing the exploration of Mars. The last section was more of a "personal musing" by the narrator, as if he was from Mars and had been looking back over the history of Mars exploration during the first part of the show. He nailed both the documentary feel of one section, and the personal musing of the other, and the show has been very successful. Not saying a non-celeb actor couldn't do the same, but since we had the chance to hire this person, we did.

In another show, we hired a celeb actor whose voice we just felt would work for the script. We "heard" him reading (in our minds' ear) as we were going through the script process. To be honest, I was quite surprised when he said "yes" to our request to do the work.

There are some in the science center/planetarium community who can and do afford to hire celebs for their voice-over work. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I HAVE heard shows (not any that I've produced) with narrators (both celeb and non-celeb) narrating scripts that were so poorly written I don't know why they didn't run screaming out the door. In those cases, it's possible the celeb name saved the show, but I doubt it. I've heard others that were well written and well-acted.

There are others in the community who feel that using a celeb narrator could overpower the information being presented in the show. It's a valid concern, but I've never felt, for example, that I was learning LESS because Benedict Cumberbatch or Judy Dench was narrating.

Of bigger concern is the price of such a narrator and asking whether the work they do is worth the expense. In such cases, look to the script first. A good script will almost always be performed well. A bad script--it turns out HAVE heard tales of at least ONE well-known narrator walking out of session when the script was so badly written they couldn't make sense of it.

And yes, there IS always the factor that people who hire celebs get the cachet of hanging out with that celeb for a while. Completely understandable. We primates are hierarchical after all. It's a poor reason to hire anybody, IMHO.

My personal preference is to hire the best voice for the given job. If it's a celeb voice that I've heard and liked, then if we can afford the person, we go for it. If it's someone non-celeb and we like THAT person, we go for it. I don't particularly care about the arguments based on "overpowering the content" because, if a script is well-written, that's going to inspire the actor (famous or not) to really get into it and do a good job (regardless of what they're being paid).

Are celebs taking away jobs from non-celebs in these productions? Maybe. Maybe not. Since producers for these shows hire more non-celebs than celebs, I'd guess "not". I know there ARE people on this board who narrate for exhibits, and I've personally either narrated some planetarium videos, or hired non-celeb talent to narrate them. I want who's going to do the best job of telling my story, and so budget is an issue.

In that regard, I'm playing in a different pool than the animators. For now.

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Charter Member: Threadjackers Local 420