Kenin was hired to do voices for all of the animated characters during shooting for 2011's The Smurfs and its sequel celebrities were brought in to do the final voiceover work later. The marriage of live-action and computer-generated characters has opened up a whole new venue for voiceover artists-though they might not necessarily make the final cut. THEY SOMETIMES DO VOICES THAT NEVER GET HEARD. “I just had to wait for the leaf blower guy to leave,” he says. Now it’s, ‘What are you doing right now? Can we email you a script?’” When Wingert was the voice of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he was expected to be able to turn around material quickly. “It used to be a minimum two weeks’ notice. “I would say 95 percent of solo work, like movie trailers and promos, is done at home,” Burton says.īecause of the convenience factor, actors can sometimes get job offers on 10 minutes’ notice. While animated shows and films still prefer to have group sessions in-studio when schedules permit, actors hired on gigs for network spots or commercials often take advantage of ISDN lines in their home to phone in performances. Mimic specialists tend to watch actors in films to get a feel for their vocal characteristics, but, as Kenin points out, “They might have had someone doing his grunts for Meet the Fockers, too, so I wind up doing an impression of an impression.” 2. (Kenin also does a good out-of-breath John Cusack.) “At first I thought they wanted words,” he says, “but they said, ‘No, no, we just want you to literally breathe.’” Kenin sighed, grunted, and ugghed his way through a session. When sound engineers needed someone to sit in for a busy Ben Stiller to loop (re-record) his grunts for 2011’s Tower Heist, they called Kenin. Kenin, who pops up on Family Guy as the cackling, hyper “Tiny Tom Cruise,” is known in the business as a mimic: He can approximate well-known performers right down to how they sound when they’re gasping for air. SOME ACTORS ARE HIRED JUST FOR BREATHING. We asked Burton, Sean Kenin ( Family Guy, Smurfs 2, the web series 47 Secrets to a Younger You), and Wally Wingert ( The Garfield Show, Batman: Arkham Knight) to let us in on some of the lesser-known facts about the voiceover business. (And a form of self-defense: Burton’s Bullwinkle got him out of at least one childhood beating.) But it also requires actors to master a craft that requires a huge arsenal of talents, an ability to deliver a performance using only your vocal cords, and a willingness to work at the drop of a hat. If you're a non-celebrity, it’s not an easy profession to make a steady living at.” “People have this idea you run in wearing tennis shoes and get lines thrown at you for a ton of money,” says Corey Burton, a veteran voiceover actor ( DuckTales, Transformers) with over 40 years in the business. ![]() After all, how hard could it be to act like a walking piece of pork with a speech impediment? He might even mention how cushy a job it is to sit in a booth for a couple of hours, stammering, for a fat check. ![]() Everyone knows a guy who can do a pretty respectable Porky Pig.
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