The popular view of voice acting is doing voices for cartoons, especially among the would-be voice over actors frequenting a site like Toonzone. However, the truth is that most voice actors' bread-and-butter work is in promotions and advertising, even for the bigger, recognizable cartoon voice over names. We may know Corey Burton as the voice of Brainiac, but he's much more widely heard as the voice of Old Navy. Corinne Orr may be Speed Racer's Trixie for old-school animation fans, but she paid the rent for years as the voice of the Snuggle fabric softener bear. To learn the skills and techniques to compete in the promotional market, you would do well to seek out the one-day "Book It!" workshop by veteran voice-over casting director Mary Lynn Wissner, which I attended this past weekend.
Wissner is a 20+ year veteran of the voice acting business, and her workshop is oriented around the audition process for promotional or advertising work. The explicit goal of the class is to teach students tips, tricks, and techniques to get more bookings. It is definitely not an introductory class for a beginner seeking to break into the industry, although someone (like me) with experience from other introductory classes can follow along easily enough. The class materials are oriented around a handful of simple rules that are easy to understand and apply to one's career and vocal performances, but which are also surprisingly easy to forget, even among experienced voice actors. They're simple tricks that help personalize a read, which makes it more noticeable. The more you do to get your audition noticed by the casting directors, the more likely you're going to be booked. The guidelines she gave us are simple and intuitive, but also not things that many of us thought to do, even after Wissner explained them to us.
Wissner provided a list of what she called the five most popular directions given for voice-over, along with a list of nine vocal placements as a set of tools for our vocal toolboxes (e.g., bright, nasal, throaty, or diaphragm), which Wissner credited to voice director Sue Blu. Participants in the workshop quickly learn how mixing and matching a direction with the vocal placements can open up many more avenues for a vocal performance, and this is probably the greatest strength of Wissner's class. Most of the session was practice in the booth with real audition copy and a direction for the read. Each student is directed through a simulated audition, with Wissner suggesting improvements and helping to shape and focus the performance. Wissner has an incredible talent for finding and teasing out an actor's best in the booth. Students were often surprised at what was coming out in their own reads, finding sweet spots in their vocal range that they didn't even know they had. If nothing else, a few sessions in the booth with Wissner's direction is a fantastic way to broaden and hone the vocal tools in an actor's toolbox, making one's reads more distinctive and versatile, and consequently increasing your likelihood of a booking.
Getting to work with other actors is also a wonderful learning experience over and above the actual class material. One of Wissner's guidelines is "Follow Directions," and that applies to all the hardcopy materials you get, all the verbal instructions at a read, and directions given to other actors. I think one of the most educational elements of any acting class is watching other actors work in a controlled environment. It's always helpful to think about how you would have read someone else's copy or how you would alter your own performance in response to the directions given. Wissner also makes sure to set aside time for dialogue auditions, where multiple actors will audition simultaneously for a conversational ad. The environment often resulted in actors sparking off each other, generating palpable and audible energy and enthusiasm.
Some time is also spent on aspects of the business, such as setting up your own home studio, promoting yourself and your abilities, and the blessing/curse that is the Internet for a voice actor. The Internet and modern computing technology makes it much easier for a voice actor to record and send auditions from home, but that same ease has also made the pool of available talent much larger and more competitive. The amount of time spent on this segment seems tailored to student interest; our session spent far more time in the booth, but the class handouts go into a good amount of detail on those subjects as well.
There are obviously differences between voice-acting for promotional work and voice-acting for animation. Wissner told us never to fake an accent that we couldn't do natively; in Bob Bergen's animation-centric seminars, accents were actively encouraged if it fit the character. A lot of advertising or promo copy is going to be very different from an animation script and will require a different approach to the material. However, there does seem to be plenty of room to use skills acquired in commercial work as an animation voice-over actor. For example, the skills required for a public service announcement or one of those medical disclaimer voice-overs ("side effects may include...") aren't going to get used too often in an animation script, but the authoritative voice required for them would certainly be an asset for an animated character. Both Bergen and Wissner advised us that it's better to start off over-the-top in voice over and be told to dial it back, and both of them would ask actors, "Who are you talking to?" as a tactic to sharpen a performance. The skills needed to communicate character quickly for promos, where you have one chance and 30-60 seconds to bring across a character, would also seem to be of definite use in animation work.
I'm not much more than a curious dilettante in the world of voice-over acting, but much of what Wissner taught certainly gels with what I've learned elsewhere and spoken with voice actors about. You also can't really argue with results: many of Wissner's students will rave about her classes, and after the one-day "Book It!" session I can understand why. If you're a working voice actor who wants more bookings (and, really, who doesn't?), Wissner's class comes highly recommended.
The following sound files are provided as examples of the class work in "Book It!" All files are in MP3 format.
Solo: Kia Rio (1.8 MB) This is one of my solo reads, showing how Wissner shapes a performance through vocal placement and how many different ways I can mis-pronounce "Kia Rio" in one read. I laughed when Wissner suggested the "evil" kind of voice because I did King Renwick in that same booth in Bob Bergen's class, and had a flash of "evil wizard doing car ad" for a second.
Dialogue: St. Croix (1.9 MB) A fun dialogue spot I did with the amazing Tracy Bidleman for St. Croix. She did all the work (and nailed it). I, on the other hand, had only two lines and still managed to bobble one of them in the first read.
Dialogue: Washington Metro (1.2 MB) A three-man dialogue spot with Michael Amaral, Michael Lockwood-Crouch, and I. They're both very talented guys that I worked with in Bob Bergen's advanced class.
Special thanks to Mary Lynn Wissner, all my classmates at "Book It!", and sound engineer extraordinaire Zane Birdwell at John Marshall Sound. Check Wissner's website for future offerings of "Book It!" or her other voice-over seminars. For more reading at Toonzone on voice-acting, check out the following:
Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the group responsible for the eponymous Academy Awards) decided that the technique of motion capture will no longer be considered to be "animation". So, what does this mean for any animated Oscar hopefuls? According to AMPAS, the new definition for "animation" is something that consists of at least 75% of animation made by a "frame-to-frame technique". (Coincidentally, they've also broadened the time limits for animated films, allowing more films to reach the necessary criteria to qualify.)
It's understandable that the Academy would want to put these type of rules in place. Motion-capture consists of real actors getting their performances converted into an animated CGI form. In a way, it could be considered "cheating" and unfair to features that animate from scratch. It's almost like taking a script, having Microsoft Sam read it, and then submit that reading into a competition with real actors. Almost.
What the Academy doesn't seem to take into consideration is that mo-cap is not some magic machine that converts live-action performances into a completed film automatically. Behind every mo-cap movie is a team of animators working frame-by-frame to take those performances and turn them into actual animated features. To say that these people are not animators seems insulting and a bit elitist.
Who is the Academy to dictate to artists what their work is and is not? And if mo-cap isn't allowed, then what about rotoscoping? Rotoscoping consists of tracing live-action images into drawings and is pretty much just a lo-fi, two-dimensional version of motion capture. Also, what about programs like Macromedia Flash that allow you to tween drawings from location to location, without actually drawing each frame? Surely those aren't "true animation", too?
The line between animation and live-action has become very blurred in this modern day and age. The days where the majority of animation was drawn traditionally without shortcuts and easily distinguishable from real actors is long gone. The advent of the digital age has allowed animation and its processes to branch off into newer, different forms. Animation has become much more widespread in Hollywood under the guise of "special effects". Chances are that your average summer popcorn flick will contain more CG special effects than real people these days.
As with a lot of technological advances these days, their biggest flaw comes with users attached. Technology has become so advanced that the advancements are moving faster than our society can comprehend them and wedge them into our everyday rules. Just like how cybercrime isn't punished as much as it should be due to the modern-day criminal justice system being fixated on physical crimes, modern animation isn't recognized as much as it should be due to Hollywood's fixation on a certain perception of the medium that is becoming increasingly outdated. As an example, one aforementioned popcorn flick was James Cameron's Avatar. The movie used state-of-the-art technology to create an alien world that was more virtual than physical. Despite featuring live-action actors, the majority of these "people" were altered so heavily by mo-cap and CG that the film probably could have run for Best Animated Feature if it wanted to. James Cameron didn't like the idea of his movie being a "cartoon" and staunchly proclaimed the opposite.
The perception of animation needs to change if it is ever to be seen as live-action's equal. Maybe the act of classifying something as "animation" period is something that needs to change. By creating awards like "Best Animated Feature", cartoons are walled off into their own ghetto, separated from the "real" movies. Maybe we should all be springing for movies to be judged on the same stage, regardless of medium. Pixar's Up was given a Best Picture nomination, and that's a start.
So, what is animation? Animation in its most broad and basic terms is any moving image that isn't real, any moving image that isn't physically happening during production. Pandora is animation. Bugs Bunny is animation. Wallace and Gromit are animation. Buzz Lightyear is animation. Animation is not what animation was fifty or even twenty years ago. Animation today is a diverse, serious medium that needs to be treated as just that: a medium. Animation is not a genre, and it is not some sort of uniform style of art and production. Animated films are indeed real movies.
Representatives of VIZ Media gave away prizes and presented their upcoming titles to attendees. VIZ showed a preview for one of its recent anime licenses, Vampire Knight, which will get volume 2 and 3 DVD releases in September and November respectively. The next uncut DVD boxset for Naruto Shippuden will be released on August 3. There were a lot more new manga titles than anything announced at the panel. In terms of new anime, VIZ announced the licensing of the new anime series, Nura: Rise of The Yokai Clan. VIZ has recently began simulcasting the new series on its website. Nura does look like an interesting show. I asked one of the VIZ representatives about official digital releases of Shonen Jump manga titles, but according to VIZ, it appears there are no plans for this right now.
INSIDE THE VOICE ACTOR'S STUDIO - CRISPIN FREEMAN
Tommy Oliver moderated a special "Inside The Actor's Studio" interview/panel with voice acting superstar, writer, and director Crispin Freeman. Before the panel started, Bang Zoom showed some clips from its Adventures in Voice Acting DVD. Crispin Freeman delivered some informative anecdotes regarding his upbringing and growing up in the world of theatre and opera houses. Also, a video was talking about the anime mythology course that Freeman teaches. The course also analyzes Western civilization's attraction to super heroes and the East's attraction to giant robots. Freeman answered questions for fans in attendance.
ANIME PREVIEW: GUNDAM UNICORN
If you are a fan of mecha, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is just what the doctor ordered. Bandai Entertainment premiered the new English dub for the first episode of the six episode OVA series. The new series is set in the classic Gundam Universal Century timeline, U.C. 0096, not long after the second Neo Zeon War. An engineering student, Banagher Links, rescues a woman named Audrey Byrne. Audrey is trying to prevent a war. The center of the new conflict surrounds the secret held by something called Laplace's Box. Ultimately, Neo Zeon launches an attack on the Industrial 7 colony where Branagher lives. As usually in Gundam, the plucky young protagonist (this time Banagher), unwittingly becomes a Gundam mobile suit pilot. This definitely looks like it will be a fine and exciting Gundam animation, coming off the alternate universe Gundam phenomenon that was Gundam 00. The animation and production quality are top notch. The new Gundam Unicorn mobile suit looks fantastic in action, especially the transformation from Unicorn mode to Destroy mode. Some of the dialogue bits between Audrey and Banagher are a little hokey, like when Banagher expresses that he desperately wants Audrey to need him. I'm not sure if this is just bad translation or another writing brainfart such as, "The master of unlocking," from the original Resident Evil.
ANIME PREVIEW: TRIGUN - BADLANDS RUMBLE
In a surprise premiere from FUNimation and Flying Dog, the new Trigun anime movie, Trigun: Badlands Rumble was shown. This was the first time the movie was screened in the US with English subtitles. Producer Shigeru Kitayama, who also produced the TV series for Trigun, was live in attendance to introduce the movie. Kitayama explained that the intent was to go back earlier in the story of Trigun when it was more light hearted and fun, before all the heavy drama that came later. The movie begins in a flashback where the one and only Vash The Stampede thwarts the bank robbery of a bank robber named Gasback. Gasback takes bank robbing very seriously. Like most encounters with Vash, the incident ends with many explosions and Gasback gets away. However, Gasback's three accomplices betray Gasback and get away with all of the cash too.
Twenty years later, Gasback's former accomplice, Kepler, is now the mayor of a prominent desert city on planet Gunsmoke. However, Gasback is apparently planning the robbery to end all robberies and get revenge on Kepler. The Bernardelli Insurance Agents from the show, Milly and Meryl, are back. Milly and Meryl must protect Kepler's gaudy bronze statue, which has a hefty insurance policy payout. Gasback's pending appearance draws the interest of bounty hunters from all over, including the lovely and mysterious Amelia. Amelia appears to hold a personal connection to Gasback (the movie pretty much telegraphs it from the moment she appears). Vash is also hanging around, but his sense of justice and righteousness in wanting to help people, as well as his refusal to kill anyone, comes to the forefront. Vash's acquaintance, the wandering preacher, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, also comes into play with his boss Mercy crucifix weapon.
In terms of narrative timeline, this is more or less a filler storyline for the Trigun anime series or an inbetween-quel, much like the Cowboy Bebop movie. The villain and plot are fairly average. However, the great thing is that the movie reunites the dynamite cast and crew of the series. Satoshi Nishimura returns as director. All of the original Japanese voice actors have reprised their roles as well. And most of all, Tsuneo Imahori returns as music composer, bringing in his funky beats and jamming guitar. Later in the movie, the Trigun theme song, "H.T." even makes a special appearance, and it has never sounded better.
The animation looks gorgeous. Madhouse has brought its A-game to this production. The movie contains a little bit of CG animation mixed with the traditional animation style. The movement and fluidity of the action sequences look extremely fluid and well done. The animators have kept the production and character design faithful to the original series. It appears that Vash's design was tweaked ever so slightly. But aside from that, everyone appears to look the same as their TV counterparts. FUNimation will release Trigun: Badlands Rumble stateside sometime in 2011. Hopefully, Johnny Yong Bosch will return once again behind the microphone to play our favorite Humanoid Typhoon.
ANIME EXPO - DAY 4
ANIME PREVIEW: FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST - BROTHERHOOD, FINAL EPISODES
FUNimation showed a special presentation of the final two episodes of the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood series, straight from Japan and subtitled into English. Several years ago, I was put off and annoyed by the purist fans of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist manga, who constantly complained about the ending of the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime and subsequent movie. The series was harsh and a little rough, yet bold, and did not hold our hands and wrap every little detail of the story in a bow. All that said, I was eager to see the execution of Brotherhood, produced by Studio Bones. Brotherhood, a new series, faithfully adapts Arakawa-san's manga that was never animated. Arakawa is still a fantastic and visual storyteller, and there are a lot of great moments and characters to witness in Brotherhood. I mean Olivier Armstrong, hubba hubba. The final two episodes resolve everything so FMA fans hearts should be content this time around. Despite my unabashed love for the original FMA series and movie, I am totally fine with the ending of Brotherhood. Like it or not, this is what the original author intended. Brotherhood in no way invalidates the original anime series. It's simply another perspective that fans can enjoy. The fan squeeing moments in the epilogue episode appear in ridiculously large supply. I will say, the ending here felt a lot more fulfilling as the end of Ed and Al's journey, and in some ways the start of a new one. Ed/Winry is my OTP (One True Pairing).
VOICE ACTING PANEL
Voice actors Kyle Hebert, Yuu Asakawa, and the incomparable Shinchi "Nabeshin" Watanabe all together took part in a special Guest of Honor voice acting panel. Asakawa was nice enough to out her famous, "HERE COMES THE DEATH BLOW" line as Rider from the show Fayt/Stay Night. Asakawa-san remarked on her fondness for her recent turn as Lebreau in Final Fantasy 13. Kyle Hebert told an interesting story regarding recording the voice for Kamina in Gurren Lagann. Hebert tried to lower the age of the voice to appease the Japanese producers who had a say in the English voice casting as well. Nabeshin humorously remarked about Asakawa-san's speaking and how everything sounds better when said by a beautiful woman. Nabeshin also belted out the NABE-MEHA-MEHA attack line from Excel Saga which is awesome. Since Nabeshin is more of an anime director who simply voices himself in most of his shows, Nabeshin told humorous stories about working with anime voice actor Shinichi Watanabe and anime director Shinichi Watanabe. Nabeshin also explained how to best become an Afro Warrior.
ANIME EXPO 2010 ANALYSIS
Going by the Anime Expo this year, the overall prognosis for the industry appears better than usual. Or at the very least, better than last year. Geneon Universal is co-producing and financing new anime projects and partnering with American distribution companies for US releases. FUNimation had a strong presence, made some strong licenses, and previewed some excellent looking titles. Section 23 appears to be gaining ground as a US anime distributor and is now going to dub some newly licensed titles such as High School of The Dead. I was very surprised and happy to hear about the pending US releases for shows such as K-On and Durarara!! It's great that so many distributors now use modern technology by shortening the release window of new anime with simulcasts and ad-supported web streaming. I just wish the big manga publishers would get on board with something similar. The convention itself still seems like it is shrinking and declining. There appears to be new shift in management and staff that has caused an overall downturn. In comparison to recent years, the exhibition hall setup looked sad. Autograph booth setups and signing schedules were left a lot to be desired. Hopefully, staff and management will have a better handle on the convention next year. I would also like to personally thank Nabeshin for showing me the way of Afro Senshi and for giving me his personalized autograph on my Excel Saga DVD set:
In
1992, millionaire media mogul Ted Turner decided to put his massive
animation library to use and he created a revolutionary new cartoon
network. He imaginatively titled it Cartoon Network, and later ran off
to one of his four ranches in Montana to retire. The cable channel
would be dedicated to showing animation 24/7. Over the years, a tiny experiment
grew into a moderately successful outlet for original and acquired
animation. This, along with Nickelodeon's successful and growing stable
of Nicktoons had turned cable television into the most important outlet
for animation in the country by the dawn of the new millennium. During
the late 90's and beyond, more companies were jumping on Ted's train of thought
and creating animation stations of their own, from Nickelodeon's
Nicktoons TV to Disney's Toon Disney. These channels often went global,
bringing localized versions of themselves to new frontiers. Some
countries decided to make their own cartoon networks, such as Canada's
Teletoon and Asia's Animax. Bringing the situation to newer
absurdities, broadcasters began to create newer niche networks out of
the already existing animation niche, like classics-only Boomerang or
the now-defunct but self-explanatory Anime Network. So where are these
networks now? Most of them still exist, but in name only. With the
exception of Boomerang and handful of smaller stations, live-action has
been aggressively encroaching on animation on networks that claim to be
dedicated to it. How did cartoon networks become an endangered species?
As
with most examples of network "gentrification", it all began slowly. In
2005, Cartoon Network began to show live-action movies here or there,
regardless of their relation to animation. At the time, the higher-ups
gave the excuse that these movies were "cartoony in spirit" or "had
animated special effects", suddenly making it acceptable to show
anything on Cartoon Network as long as someone could tangentially
relate it to animation. Cartoon Network's raunchier late-night cousin
Adult Swim similarly dropped all pretenses of being animation-only in
2007, when they greenlighted several live-action original series. To
this day, Adult Swim airs and produces much more live-action than its
daytime counterpart. Despite several attempts to popularize live-action
on CN (including several original movies and a failed sitcom), the
offensive came in full force in the summer of 2009, with six reality shows, in contrast to the whopping zero original cartoons that
premiered that year. Despite the best efforts of the Turner hype
machine, pretty much every attempt to put live-action on a cartoon
network has failed, but that certainly hasn't stopped them.
And it's not the usual suspect that's at blame here. Toon Disney began to show Power Rangers and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody before Disney simply retired the brand altogether. Nicktoons shows various Nickelodeon shows and is set to get Power Rangers this fall. Even other countries are not immune, with international
versions of these networks picking up live-action series of their own.
Some channels have fallen prey without the influence of an American
mother station, like Animax in South America, which now runs That 70's Show and Clueless nightly. Why is this practice becoming so prevalent today? It's not
like animation is suddenly unprofitable. Some of these stations haven't
even found great success with their experiments but keep pushing
anyway, like Cartoon Network, who presumably thinks that "this time
things will be different".
There
are a lot of little answers that factor into this. Part of it is the
top men in charge. Just as an auto mechanic should not be running a
bakery, a person (for example, Stuart Snyder at Cartoon Network) with
expertise working at World Wrestling Entertainment should not be
running a television channel about animation. Companies often pick
"star executives" based more on track records rather than actual
experience. The problem is that instead of adapting to a new
environment, the exec simply runs the job like he would run his old
one. Another part is corporate policy. Viacom, master of corporate
synergy, has been doing this for years with Nickelodeon's sister
network Nicktoons. Nickelodeon shows like Big Time Rush and The Troop have found homes on Nicktoons simply because of this practice. (Nickelodeon has yet to return the favor.) In some cases, the fans
haven't been too helpful either, considering this practice is okay in a
lot of circles given it's live-action they like. Case in point: Power Rangers' move to Nicktoons. Cartoon Network not picking the series up was considered a "missed opportunity".
But
the major underlying cause for all of this is the way television is
being run today in general. Cable television has begun to categorize
networks by demographics instead of niches, and it shows. Most
"changed" niche networks have become that way because of attempts to
capture so-and-so demographic. MTV is no longer Music Television, it's
a network for "hip and edgy" teens. Syfy is no longer science fiction,
it's television for geeks. And Cartoon Network and its ilk are no
longer animation channels. They have been classified by the television
industry as generic kids networks and treated as such.
While
it's disheartening to see live-action on networks dedicated to
animation, it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. There are
ways to include live-action on a television network without losing the
network's original vision or integrity. For example, live-action based
on or about animated properties like Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Alvin in the Chipmunks could be fair game to show. There's also the possibility of actual
programming on the animation industry. One example that would fit
classics station Boomerang like a glove would be a series of
documentaries on animation and its history. Whether or not channels are
willing to respect their own format is up to them.
Unfortunately,
this mentality will never change if the industry never changes. The
current focus on strict sets of demographics and nothing else is
threatening diversity on television as a whole and turning cable into a
mass of gray goo where you can catch repeats of shows like Law and Order on every other network and dozens of carbon copies of popular shows
because "men ages 18-34 like this" or "girls ages 7-15 like that". Even Nielsen themselves say not to take up too much stock in that type of thinking.
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