Gamer’s Edition of World Records to be Released by Guinness

Yes, Billy Mitchell is still the king of Kong.

In the first “Gamer’s Edition” of Guinness World Records, due out March 11, Mitchell, of Hollywood, Fla., ranks as the top-scoring player of the arcade version of “Donkey Kong.”

Mitchell’s score is 0.1 percent ahead of Steve Wiebe of Redmond, Wash., whose quest to unseat Mitchell was the subject of the 2007 documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.”

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Sausalito Company Voicetrax Celebrates 20th Anniversary

The business of the voice-over has taken directions the founder of a Sausalito studio and academy never imagined when she started it 20 years ago.

A successful voice actress at the time, Samantha Paris had experience doing voices for cartoon characters, commercials and film narratives in Los Angeles, but she never imagined she would offer the range of classes that she does at Voicetrax San Francisco Inc., based in Sausalito.

Voicetrax’s curriculum includes more than 100 workshops and seminars for students at all levels, as well as individual coaching. Its clients include news anchors and trial attorneys who want to improve their presentations, as well as professional voice actors.

Classes cover acting, narration, dialogue, animation and audition techniques. But newer classes have been developed to meet modern-day needs that were created largely by advances in technology. For instance, Paris has introduced a directing class because agents increasingly expect actors to be able to audition from home - without a director.

“Technology is pulling me,” Paris said. “I have to stay on top of it. There are more voice-over opportunities than ever before.”

New business has come in the form of multimedia, podcasts, telephone prompts, Web voice work, walking tour guides and audiobooks. Paris, 47, has been a voice actor for 32 years and admits she has run the business living on the edge.

“It’s my life. It’s my passion,” Paris said. “Your business plan is you’re going to wake up every day and do what you love.”

Paris said although hers is the only such business in Marin, she is aware of two other similar businesses in San Francisco.

When Paris moved from Los Angeles to Sausalito 20 years ago, only a handful of actors in San Francisco were doing voice-over work. That surprised her because many of the scripts she read in Los Angeles were from advertising agencies in the Bay Area.

As she picked up work and got to know people in the industry, she found that the Bay Area did not have a large pool of voice-over artists, so the agencies sent scripts directly to Los Angeles.

Before long, students were coming to her for coaching, and Voicetrax was established in a hall closet in her home. As the business grew, Paris added a casting service after local producers were asking for talent.

“It signaled a huge shift in the ad agencies’ attitude toward the Bay Area talent pool,” Paris said. “It showed that they were becoming more open to the idea of hiring locally for their high-profile campaigns.”

Chuck Kourouklis started with Voicetrax as a student and now works in the studio. He said voice acting can be more tricky than performing on a stage because the actor must connect with an audience without physical gestures.

There is more to voice acting than training, he said.

“You need to learn how to act and learn the process of seeking representation and getting auditions,” Kourouklis said.

Source: Marin Independent Journal

Image: Samantha Paris directs students while teaching a class at Voicetrax in Sausalito. Her voice-over training program is celebrating its 20th anniversary. (IJ photo/Jeff Vendsel)

ISDN and Source-Connect Explained for Voice Actors

As explained in a new article penned by voice artist Jennifer Vaughn at VoiceOverXtra.com, ISDN - or Integrated Services Digital Network - and Source-Connect are tools that allow two-way, high fidelity, real time communication and recording from a home studio to high-end studios, stations and networks elsewhere, all over the world.

“With an ISDN connection, it’s like being right in the client’s studio,” explains Jennifer Vaughn, author of the article, “What Are ISDN and Source-Connect? Do I Need Them?”

In this process, the voice actor records and transmits in real time, while receiving direction from the external studio. However, these high-tech tools involve rather costly equipment and monthly subscription charges (ISDN) or software (Source-Connect).

To read the full article, click here.

Source: OpenPR.com

British Animation Awards Finalists Announced

Aardman Animations came out on top with four nominations as the U.K. Film Council today announced finalists for the 2008 British Animation Awards. Bringing together the industry’s most talented and celebrated figures, the annual event will be held on March 13 at the BFI on the South Bank (National Film Theatre). The ceremony will be hosted by veteran voice actor Joe Pasquale, who can be heard in 20th Century Fox Animation’s CG adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who!, starring Jim Carrey and Steve Carell.

“The mix of nominees for the 2008 Awards reflects the diversity of the work that makes the UK such a powerhouse in the international animation scene,” says awards director Jayne Pilling. “BAA strives to award those that have made a contribution to the animation scene whether they’re newcomers or veterans.”

Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep is up for Best Children’s Series, while The Pearce Sisters, directed by Aardman’s Luis Cook, is in the running for the Craft Award and Best Short Film. In addition, The Peculiar Adventures of Hector Directors, which Aardman created in collaboration with Texaco, is nominated for New Media: Best Commissioned Animation. In the hotly contested Craft Award, Aardman will find tough competition from Dreams & Desires: Family Ties by renowned animator Joanna Quinn, as well as Ian Mackinnon’s Adjustment. The other nominees for Best Short Film are Elizabeth Hobbs’ The Old, Old, Very Old Man, and Osbert Parker’s Yours Truly.

Nominated for Best TV Special, Tiger Aspect’s Charlie & Lola: How Many More Minutes Until Christmas and The Wrong Trainers are up against Suzie Templeton’s stop-motion film Peter & The Wolf, which has recently been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short.

In the newly created Best Voice Character category, Jane Horrocks who, provides the voice for Illuminated Film Co.’s Little Princess, is up against Robert Lindsay in Jon Dunleavy’s short The Technical Hitch, and Peter Capaldi in Haunted Hogmanay from Scotland’s Ko Lik Films. Little Princess receives a second nomination in the Best Preschool Series category, taking on Charlie & Lola: Too Many Big Words and Zinkia’s Pocoyo.

The British Animation Awards’ Public Choice offers audiences across the U.K. a chance to vote for winners in the short film, music video and animated commercial categories. Voting forms are being issued at screenings taking place in a number of venues in 28 cities across the U.K. Kids can also get into the act with the Children’s Choice Award, sponsored by CBBC/CBeebies.

For a complete list of nominees and other details of the event, go to www.britishanimationawards.com.

Source: AnimationMagazine.net

Report: Podcasting Keeps Growing

A new report published by eMarketer states that podcasting continues to grow at an incredible rate. The listening audience is increasing in size, and along that comes growth in advertising spending tied to podcasts.

eMarketer estimates that the total US podcast audience reached 18.5 million in 2007.

Furthermore, that audience will increase by 251% to 65 million in 2012. And of those listeners, 25 million will be “active” users who tune in at least once a week.

”As the US podcasting industry matures it is unquestionably creating a listening audience,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Podcast Audience: Seeking Riches in Niches, “And along with a larger audience comes increases in advertising spending tied to podcasts.” Read more

Cop by Day, Voice Actor By Night

San Leandro police officer Brian Sommer enjoys his career catching criminals.

But when his uniform comes off, Sommer sometimes turns into the bad guy or a monster voice acting in video games.

Brian can be heard on more than 40 video games, such as “Sam & Max,” “Art of Murder” and “Death Jr. 2: Root of Evil.”  He also does some commercial voice over work for television and radio.

His voice is extremely versatile, branding himself as Brian Sommer, Killer Voiceover.

To hear a sampling of Brian Sommer’s character voices, learn more about why he got started in voice acting and find out who his voice over heroes are, click on the source link below to listen to a recent podcast featuring some Killer Voiceover.

Source: SFGate.com

Voice of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” Glistens on Broadway

Ariel, the heroine of Disney’s animated film “The Little Mermaid,” kept Jodi Benson occupied for only 14 days in the recording studio when the Illinois-born singer taped the part for the 1989 blockbuster. But ever since, she has been associated with the character and her song of hope, “Part of Your World.”

Benson, 46, wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Everything I’ve been part of has been because of my relationship to the film and my relationship to the company,” she said recently by cell phone. “It’s been a wonderful journey. And it’s still going strong, thank the Lord.”

The role and song that catapulted the ebullient Benson to fame will showed up again when she appeared as a soloist last Saturday in the Cleveland Pops Orchestra’s “Fantasies and Fairytales” program at Severance Hall.

But she has no troubling recalling the circumstances that led to her career boost. Benson was in “Smile,” a Broadway musical about beauty pageants by Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlisch, when lyricist Ashman invited female cast members to audition for an animated film he and composer Alan Menken were writing based on a beloved Hans Christian Anderson story.

Like her colleagues, Benson submitted a tape. A year later, she won the role of Ariel, never thinking it would amount to much.

“It was just a wonderful experience flying back and forth from New York to Los Angeles,” she said. “I didn’t tell anybody about it. It was a voice-over job. It wasn’t considered a real job.”

The success of “The Little Mermaid” brought Benson mounds of work in animated Disney films. She won a starring role in the Broadway musical “Crazy for You,” for which she received a Tony nomination.

Until she returned to New York last month for the opening of the stage version of “The Little Mermaid” (at the same theater, the Lunt-Fontanne, where she’d done “Smile”), Benson hadn’t seen a Broadway show since the performance of “Crazy for You” the day after she left the cast.

The opening last month of “The Little Mermaid,” which Benson attended with her son and daughter (their first Broadway show), was a “very surreal” experience for the voice of Ariel.

“They’d been talking about this coming to Broadway for 10 years,” said Benson, who has recorded several albums of Christian music. “Everything about the evening was memorable. I’m very thankful to the Lord for the opportunity to be part of this and see it happen, and watch the longevity of that, and know another generation is going to be touched by the story.”

Source: Cleveland.com

Super Bowl Ads : How Were The Voice-Overs?

Many commercials that appeared during Super Bowl XLII took a satiric tack, spoofing movies, television shows, video clips, celebrity misbehavior and more. A typical though entertaining cast of characters — animals, babies, pop stars — all made their appearances, lending a lighthearted spirit to the annual festivities.

If you missed any of these commercials, you can catch them online at MySpace.

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Actors Score $500K for Video Game Voice-Overs

 

For a time, indescribably horrific voice acting was a hallmark of video games. However, with the game industry now pulling in nearly $18 billion a year in the US alone, publishers and developers have learned that it takes some solid investment in talented people to make the voice acting in video games not only professional but enjoyable from a gamer’s point of view.

Renowned actors as Sir Ian McKellen, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Ron Perlman, Keith David, Samuel L. Jackson, Chow Yun-Fat, and others deliver top-notch vocal performances for audiobooks, film narration and video games, a trend that sees no stop to celebrity voice acting any time soon.

So how much are these actors being paid to lend their real-world pipes to virtual heroes? According to Screen Actors Guild rules, union voice actors can expect to be paid $760 for one four-hour recording session.

That’s just the fee for a professional voice actor with union status.

Now, if you were to talk celebrity voice talent, that figure increases exponentially. Speaking to Reuters, Blindlight production company general manager Lev Chapelsky said that some stars have demanded $750,000 for an hour’s worth of work, and one voice actor actually received $500,000 for a single session. Chapelsky told Reuters that top talent commonly receives “in the high five figures for a single session.”

Videogames have helped resuscitate the careers of many film and television actors, whose distinctive voices can make them a hot commodity in the game world even as their status in Hollywood fades.

Many once-familiar actors have carved out second careers as video-game characters.

Videogamers, will more likely recognize Keith David for his role as the Arbiter, the deep-voiced alien “co-star” in Microsoft’s best-selling “Halo” videogames.

Marty O’Donnell, audio director at Bungie Studios, which created “Halo”, said he stumbled across David’s distinctive voice when listening to a documentary the actor was narrating, and knew he was perfect for the Arbiter.

O’Donnell sees celebrities are a boon for the gaming industry, because there are a lot of great actors out there not currently working on the latest triple-A film.”

Roughly 1,200 to 1,500 lines of dialogue per character are recorded for story-driven games. “Halo 3″ had more than 35,000 total lines of dialogue, according to O’Donnell.

With blockbusters like Halo 3, it’s clear that residuals in games will be a major bargaining issue in upcoming SAG negotiations.

Residuals are payments to actors for subsequent showings of their work, such as when a movie is shown on TV.

Currently, voice actors don’t get residuals for games, and it’s an issue that echoes the complaints of Hollywood’s striking writers that they should be paid more for digital distribution of their works.

Source: Reuters

Photo: REUTERS/Phil McCarten

Television Networks to Put More Shows Online

Nearly 330 production companies showed off television shows and movies here at the National Association of Television Program Executives conference this week, hoping to sell the syndication rights to local stations in the United States and abroad.

This year at the biggest conference in syndication — where local affiliate stations fill their shopping carts with enough content to keep their schedules lively — the hottest topic was online syndication. In this emerging part of the market, stations buy syndicated programs to show on their Web sites, and they sell advertisements with those programs to local businesses.

As broadcast growth flattens, local stations are increasingly looking to their Web sites for new sources of revenue. Some stations are creating original programming for the Web, but it is far easier for them to purchase the online rights to syndicated shows. This week, for instance, 200 television station Web sites introduced “Big Shot Live,” a national online talent competition promoted through “Entertainment Tonight.”

Online services like Hulu, and Joost as well as the networks themselves, most notably ABC (which offers content in HD), are evidence that this is one trend that’s not likely to fad away.

For the professional voice talent, commercials still need to be produced, however the SAG, AFTRA and ACTRA have yet to put in place union rates that adequately cover what is in effect national commercials, only played online versus traditional broadcast television.

The success or failure of stations’ online ventures will ultimately rest on their promotional abilities. Viewers of local TV are often reminded to go online for weather and traffic updates, but often they go to the site of their local newspaper instead. And when they want to see television shows online, they gravitate toward the networks’ Web sites.

Source:  New York Times, Vox Daily

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