When I was growing up, I was so fascinated by Mel Blanc and all of the different voices that he did for 'Looney Tunes' and watching Robin Williams record voice-over for the genie in 'Aladdin.' It always seemed to be a major honor - something you have to earn. Like people trust you when they want to have you there without seeing you.
Most of screenplay writing is deciding which voices you want to listen to and take on board.
I was always talking in weird voices from the time I was two. I guess I just found a way to keep doing it! I did get a degree in theater and took some voice-over classes... but most of it is just the same stuff I was doing as a kid!
I've dubbed for the likes of Rabi Ghose, Anup Kumar, Anil Chatterjee, Asrani, Ranjit Mallick, among others.
I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.
Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.
I'm really comfortable doing voice-overs, but it's really fun to do animation. Those animation talents are hysterical. They're so good, and they're so amazingly quick on their feet.
I'm not thinking in any big thematic or conceptual terms - especially in this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] when I was trying to make the voices more active, more energetic.
I loved the opportunity to just transform my voice. I loved the idea of doing impressions and mimicking and playing around with the spectrum of your own voice. That's what I enjoy most about doing voice-overs.
Mel Blanc is a hero because of what he could do with his voice for all the Looney Tunes, the Warner Brothers cartoons, to be the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig.
Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.
When you write for a show that's not yours, your job is to hear the voices of the characters and write as best you can for those voices.
When you write, you hear the characters speaking to you as you take dictation from what they say. And obviously, they had particular personalities when you hear them.
I've not been called on to do a lot of accent work.
I work with all these amazing voice actors that do a kajillion voices.
As a young actor, I would be invited to the CBC radio drama department to do voices for different characters, and I found that I could do quite a few of them. I wasn't a visual presence, and I found it easier to construct a voice from the written page.
They [my characters]speak to me all the time! In fact some of them never shut up!
I loved the Disney films, and Sterling Holloway was one of their chief talents. He never had to put on a voice, and that's what Mike [Mitchell] and I encourage. I love the voices that have a unique texture, but it's their real voice.
To be honest, until I started dubbing, I didn't realize the amount of work of a dubbing artiste puts in. Especially the artistes that dub for villains. They really stretch their vocal cords to a different dimension.
When you're writing a pilot, unless you already have an actor attached to the project, you're writing it with all the voices sort of in your head. Once you actually cast it, the actors become the voices of the characters, and you start to write for them and their strengths.
So much of what I do... is coming up with new characters and trying to invent voices for them, and to have people fully fleshed out in my head and to know who can say what in the scene and who these characters are... I love it.
Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.
I do lots of weird voices and I kind of act out my raps. That's something that's always been in me.
By putting myself out there the way I've been doing people see me as a real person. Even though I do character voices and funny noises the stories are still real and I put them all out there.
I look at some of the old villains in the Disney movies. If you really listen, you can hear some of the villains or some of the supporting characters, they use the voices over and over because they were so versatile in the way that they performed on voiceovers.
