Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters (including those in feature films, television series, animated shorts, and video games) and radio and audio dramas and comedy, doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.
Performers are called voice actors, voice actresses or voice artists, and may also involve singing, although a second voice actor is sometimes cast as the character’s singing voice. Voice artists are also used to record the individual sample fragments played back by a computer in an automated announcement system.
For much of the history of North American animation, voice actors had a predominantly low profile as performers, with Mel Blanc the major exception. Over time, many movie stars began voice acting in movies, with one of the earliest examples being The Jungle Book, which counted among its cast contemporary stars such as Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, and Louis Prima. The film which truly brought about this modern perception, however was Aladdin which was marketed with a noted emphasis on Robin Williams’ role. The success of this film eventually spurred the idea of highlighting the voice actors as stars of a film, this becoming the norm in movie marketing, with a greater focus on hiring Hollywood celebrities for name power, rather than performers with more experience in voice acting. By contrast, using anime voice actors as a box office draw was developed far earlier in Japan.
Training
Instruction in how to enter the voiceovers marketplace and how to market one’s services is offered at various acting schools and also at adult learning facilities such as Chicago’s Discovery Center.
Many VO coaches who have had success in commercial, narration, and animation offer private training, tele-seminars and weekend workshops for both novice and experienced voice actors. The VoiceOver International Creative Experience (VOICE) in Los Angeles is an annual global conference open to all voice actors, coaches, agents, and producers whose goal is to promote community, education, and technology within the VO industry.
Steady work as a voiceover talent in the US is normally possible only in major metro areas such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, although with the rise of the Internet and digital voice networks (i.e. fiber optic or ISDN lines) that can transmit recordings that voice actors make, this may be slowly changing.
