Narnia Movie “Prince Caspian” Voice Acting Review

 

The long awaited The Chronicles of Narnia : Prince Caspian has been in theatres for just short of two weeks, and let me tell you, was it ever something.

The voice acting was very good and I must say that I was particularly fond of the voice of the badger, Trufflehunter, voiced by Ken Stott.

There was some great comic relief from a sword-wielding mouse, Reepicheep, voiced by Eddie Izzard.

I was taken aback by just how few Liam Neeson’s lines as Aslan were in the film. For all of the hype I expected that his character Aslan would have played a larger role in Prince Caspian. I haven’t read this particular Narnia book and am unaware if portions of the novel were left out to keep the film to 2 hours and 20 minutes.

One observation I made as the credits rolled by on the screen was that there were no female voice actors!

The movie was male dominated, both on-camera actors and off, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to see a lack of female voice talent listed in the credits. I’ve heard that you need to have a certain number of lines in a film before you are credited, so it’s possible that there were female talent who provided voice overs but because their lines were so few, they were not mentioned.

Prince Caspian Voice Cast

Liam Neeson as the voice of Aslan
Ken Stott as the voice of Trufflehunter
Harry Gregson-Williams as the voice of Pattertwig the Squirrel
Sim Evan-Jones as the voice of Peepiceek
David Walliams as the voice of Bulgy Bear
Eddie Izzard as the voice of Reepicheep

Source: Stephanie Ciccarelli of VOX Daily

Voice Over Experts Podcast Celebrates 50 Golden Episodes

Once in while an idea forms and inspiration develops into action giving birth to something innovative and new that carves a path for itself in unchartered territory.

For the voice over industry last year, that spark of genius was Voice Over Experts, a podcast created for aspiring and professional voice actors that provides ongoing education and access to some of the most interesting, generous and most esteemed voice over instructors of our time, all of whom have donated their expertise in efforts to positively impact and help propel the industry in the days and years ahead.

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Game Developers and Voice Actors Need to See Eye to Eye

A tale of two cities.

One stakes its honor on building a foundation, designing landscapes and perfecting a painstaking process while the other measures its worth based upon on its ability to provoke affections and move mountains with resonant vocal agility.

Developers VS Voice Actors is not just an epic battle for dollars and cents but recognition. There are few things in this world that act as drivers more so than recognition and fame.

All creative people who work behind the scenes, whether they be designers, animators, developers, script writers, or voice actors long to see their work recognized and be paid an adequate fee for the end use of their efforts. All elements in the process are important and add their own significant contributions.

It should be respected that these games exist for years on paper and digitally before a voice actor enters on the scene and that the core team of developers has a lot invested in the fulfillment and success of their project. Perhaps if voice actors were perceived as members of that team as opposed to four-hour contractors there wouldn’t be hard feelings and detrimental battles over whose voice or whose creative team is at the heart of the project.

The way that some voice actors are responding to what is going on with regard to pay or residuals is giving the profession a reputation that won’t easily be shaken and feelings of resentment that must be resolved.

While the human voice is the most powerful, persuasive and distinctly human aspect of the game itself, don’t discredit the pre-fabricated attributes that gave voice actors the material to base their interpretation of the character upon. Good characters are effective because they are exceptional on many levels, not just in how they sound.

If there is ever to be equity or a sense of fairness, developers, their crew, and voice actors need to act as a team working together, not against each other.

Synergy is the answer here and the more it is sought out, the better the relationships will be between those who work together on a project resulting in better games and better PR, period.

Source: VOX Daily

Going, Going, Gone!

Mt. Olive resident Bryan Knox will soon be appearing on Comedy Central. The American Dream is alive and well. Thanks to YouTube, anyone can be a star, just ask Bryan Knox. Knox, was the 2007 International Auctioneer Championship Grand Champion.

Knox thought it would be cool to record a commercial in the auctioneer style that won him the 2007 award. Comedy Central approached Knox after finding footage of his auctioneering abilities on YouTube.

The commercial is for “Blue Collar Bonanza,” featuring comedians Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, Bill Engvall and others.

Knox actually thought he was being PUNK’D when he got the call from Comedy Central. This is a dream come true for Knox who is an instructor at Nashville Auction School, the same auction school that helped to launch his own career.

The “Blue Collar Bonanza” will air the weekend of June 7-8 on Comedy Central. For more information about Knox, visit the Amerisouth Web site at www.amerisouthauctions.com.

Homer Simpson Has A Plan!

It has been said that art imitates life. I wonder if Homer Simpson was aware that Dan Castellaneta would want a raise from $360,000 per episode to $500,000 per episode. Of course Dan is the real life alter ego of Homer, and has been for nineteen seasons. Here is a conversation between Homer and his brain that puts a nice spin on why the powers that be may not feel the real life Simpsons voice need a raise:

Homer: Aw, twenty dollars! I wanted a peanut!
Homer’s Brain: Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts!
Homer: Explain how!
Homer’s Brain: Money can be exchanged for goods and services!
Homer: Woo-hoo!

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London Transit Gets Vocal with Voice Talent

Riding the bus in London, ON Canada has never been a more interesting let alone exceptionally sonorous experience.

The city’s public transit commission, London Transit, has recently ushered in a new era of sound by hiring professional voice actor Liz Raphael Helgesen, an Atlanta-based freelance voice professional who is no stranger to recording voice overs for mobile technologies, including T-Mobile and AT&T to name a couple.

Recently installed as the voice that tells you the next stop, for instance, “Next stop: Adelaide and Oxford” or “Stop requested”, Helgesen’s work has made an immediate impact.

London Transit commuter, Genevieve Samuels, first encountered Helgesen’s voice overs on a ride to work one morning.

Describing the voice overs as pleasant, Samuels noted, “I was pretty surprised when I got on the bus in the morning to hear each stop announced; I hadn’t heard anything in the news about it, and I’m not sure if the announcements will be on each bus or only on new ones, but stop-announcements are pretty common in larger cities and I think it’s a good idea to implement. My only complaint is that the volume is a little too loud for quiet, morning commutes on a small bus.”

London Transit planning technician, Katie Smith, confirmed the identity of the voice talent (Helgesen) over the phone, and by all accounts, the company is pleased with the response.

Source: Voices.com

Reader’s Digest Articles Voiced for the Blind by VO Pros

Fourteen of America’s best known voice actors quietly give of their time each month, voicing Reader’s Digest Articles for the blind via AIRSLA in Los Angeles.

The May podcast, which can be heard at http://airsla.org/readers_digest.asp, features the voices of:

Harlan Hogan, Larry Wayne, Cheryl Kay, Julie Williams, and Doug Turkel, with announcer Bob Marini, and post production by Steven Powell.

This is the first Reader’s Digest Podcast for Turkel who is a proud addition to the AIRSLA team.

Other talent freely giving to this endeavor, include:

Bill Lee, Bobbin Beam, Linda O’Brian, Colin Campbell, Dave Shropshire, Janet Ault, and Kara Edwards.

Source: Julie Williams

Social Networking Site with Mics

Social networking is a way to get to know people while making inroads with acquaintances found online. Sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn have given millions of people a platform to connect with old friends and keep track of what’s going on in their lives by the click of a mouse.

In recent weeks, voice talent Rick Party assembled a social network to help voice actors keep in touch and shoot the breeze, providing a virtual water cooler for people within the voice over community online.

Hosted on a social networking site called “Ning”, the “I Rock The Mic VO” community is a great place for voice actors to congregate and expand their social circle.

Specific to the voice acting community, I Rock The Mic VO gives its users the opportunity to join niche social groups and participate in discussions related to anything from recording equipment through to vocal health.

Industry pundits and personalities (even an Otolaryngologist) have already made their way through the sign up process to join in the fun, including Rodney Saulsberry, Pat Fraley, Bettye Zoller, Connie Terwilliger, Beau Weaver and many others. Celebrity voice talent and Primetime voice Joe Cipriano also has a weekly column aptly called “Ask Joe” where working talent can pose questions to one of television’s most famous voices, whose current work includes voice over for “Deal or No Deal”.

The Social Media savvy in the voice over industry have also embraced using I Rock The Mic VO including Peter K. O’Connell of audioconnell.com and the voxmarketising podcast, Terry Daniel and Trish Basanyi from the Voice Overs On Demand podcast, Wayne Henderson from the Voice-over Journey podcast and Stephanie Ciccarelli of Voices.com’s VOX Daily blog and VOX Talk podcast.

Some talent on the site have noted that like all things, frequenting the I Rock The Mic VO site must be done in moderation, stating that they will never get any real work done between the daily visits to all of the social networking sites they are members of.

Source: Voices.com

Women Playing Second Fiddle to Male Announcers in Radio?

Women are still being relegated to a sidekick role in radio, according to one of the few female breakfast show hosts in Britain to have equal footing with her male co-presenter.

JoAnne Good, who presents BBC Radio London’s Breakfast Show with Paul Ross, believes that women still face significant challenges in radio, more often than not playing second fiddle to a male presenter.

Since taking over from Danny Baker, Good has been in the hot seat at BBC London between 6am and 9am with a series of male presenters who have had to fit in with her, rather than vice versa, including Les Dennis, Andi Peters and Rowland Rivron.

But when she first moved to the breakfast slot from the Late Show, the station’s bosses hired Jono Coleman from Heart FM to join her in the studio. At that point, she says, she was “literally moved out of the big chair”.

Now she points to other female DJs such as Harriet Scott, who co-presents Heart FM’s breakfast show with Jamie Theakston.

Although he hosts the programme jointly with Scott, Theakston has been nominated alone for radio personality of the year at the radio industry Oscars the Sony Awards.

In an interview with The Independent last week, Theakston admitted: “It seems odd to be nominated personally for an award that’s really for both of us.”

Good said: “I think Harriet is very generous if she’s celebrating Jamie being up for that award, because I know as the female part of the duo she merits a lot of the success of that show.” The problem she is identifying is widespread, with female presenters in commercial and BBC radio playing a deputy role alongside male presenters.

Good believes that she has always been paired with family men because she is a “middle-aged Bridget Jones” who goes out every night in London. “Jono fitted the bill because it’s a family breakfast show and he’s got his requisite 2.4 children and a wife,” she said.

Good believes the female voice is partly to blame because it is “not as authoritative” as the male voice, which “creates confidence”. She said: “I work a lot as a voice-over artist; 80 per cent of voice-overs are male. Women do cosmetics and confectionery.”

Source: Independent.co.uk

Mystery Voice Actor Soliciting Your Vote?

Who is Lamont Williams?

That’s the question on many a blogger’s mind since the story about the direct mail and illegal robo-call voter-registration drive broke a couple of weeks ago in North Carolina.

African-American voters in North Carolina received automated, anonymous phone calls from a mysterious man named Lamont Williams a week ago. The voice informed them that they would be receiving a voter-registration packet in the mail, and it asked them to sign and return it.

“Hello, this is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return the voter registration form when it arrives. Thank you.”

The only problem is that the mail-in voter-registration deadline in North Carolina had passed, and some of the call’s recipients had already registered.

The North Carolina attorney general’s office is investigating the incident, which it says may be illegal because the calls didn’t identify their sponsors and offer recipients a way to opt out.

A D.C.-based voter-registration group called Women’s Voices, Women Vote was responsible for the campaign, and has apologized for confusing voters.

The anonymous calls using the unknown male persona look especially strange since the voter-registration group has, in the past, used high-profile celebrities to advance their cause. And everything the group has said about its mission before this week has indicated that it exclusively targets unmarried women.

Consider this price list (.pdf), found on the group’s website, in which WVWV offers to sell its database. “WVWV targets only unmarried women, including divorced or widowed women,” the document reads. “WVWV has used state-of-the-art technology and data-mining and analysis techniques in order to accurately identify these women and encourage them to register and turn out to vote.”

There’s nothing in there, or anywhere else on its website, about the group expanding to target African-American men.

The group said Thursday that Lamont Williams is the real name of the voice performer they hired for the 20-second recording. Threat Level searched the top voice talent agencies with online databases, and didn’t find Mr. Williams.

Source: Wired.com

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