Voice acting and its dangers …
You can never really go home again….
As my narrating work winds down and a month-long vacation to Italy and Greece is around the corner, I have stopped auditioning and avidly looking for more audiobooks to do. I have, after all, been looking forward to doing nothing but making lists, packing, and getting all excited about our impending adventure.
In other words, I wasn’t expecting to feel anything but relief. Recordings for the last book were what I considered perfected, were sent off to the author to approve after being paid on time, and the rest, as they say, was about to become history.
Or so I thought. When the author called and politely asked for a few more pickups (corrections) to change out a character voice and fix one more thing, I dutifully headed back into my little studio, reopened my laptop, closed the door, and made the last very short recording. THAT is when I became an even better version of that character. And THAT is when I realized I ALREADY missed my work.
Damn. There is something addictive about voice acting. Especially when I listen to expertly-narrated audiobooks, I am inspired to do better each time I receive an offer to “become” the next book. So I have to ask myself these questions: What can I do to make those voices, those personalities, and that narration even more movie-like? A chuckle before the next line? A sigh after that one? A slowdown in the delivery of the next few sentences? How about more tension and rapid-fire speech when the story gets exciting?
If I ever want to conquer the approaching AI monsters, this is an ultimatum for me — not a mere wish. Mimicry is (for me) the most sincere form of flattery. But I would never try to mimic a voice actor who was not already a pure professional. So I tend to listen only to seasoned celebrity narrators. Tom Hanks. Meryl Streep. Claire Danes. Reese Witherspoon. I just began listening to Tim Robbins narrate the sci-fi classic Fahrenheit 451 and am already blown away by his audio interprerations of Ray Bradbury’s words.
The point of this post? I have decided that in place of doing the work I love as I vay-cay, I will become the consummate student of foreign accents I have not already mastered — in this case, Italian. (Okay— I’ve heard Greek all my life, so I got that one down…) So I will mimic my GoogleTranslate prompts everywhere I go, even at the risk of embarassing my husband with some over-the top sing-songy Italian phrases. (“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday….”)
Wait — does that mean I can write this off as a business trip? Oh gawd — once a voice actor always a voice actor….