Acting
is the carefully measured act of matching human emotion for stage and the
screen. It requires careful study of the human condition and how people react
to emotional stress...but that doesn't explain why voice actors have to scream
so much. There's not much preparation for playing a superhuman teenaged fighting
machine, which is one of Kyle Hebert's Dragon Ball dub roles for Funimation.
When Hebert started portraying Gohan and started recording voice tracks for
his first fight scene, he tried to save his voice by getting close to the
microphone and screaming at half voice. That didn't fool the voice director,
who insisted that Hebert move back from the microphone and scream at full
voice. Because of audio compression and the reasonable volumes at which most
people watch anime, it might not sound as if characters are talking or screaming
loudly, but they are - and the actors at the second Saturday panel spoke
about their loud experiences.
Vic
Mignogna, who doubled at the voice acting panels in the same way he doubles
on roles at ADV Films and Funimation, told how he had a Dragon Ball role
that required a lot of yelling. He started making screams at one o'clock,
and his voice was gone by three o'clock, so far gone that he couldn't talk
normally for another two weeks. All of that, of course, didn't endear Mignogna
to the people who expected him to record tracks as ADV, but he got away with
it.
Tiffany
Grant's biggest screen screams came in the dub of the Neon Genesis Evangelion
movies for Manga Entertainment. She yells up a storm in a battle scene which
features an acting crescendo worth of the transition from the third movement
to the fourth movement in Beethoven's fifth symphony. Yet, the quiet beginning
of that scene had one of her biggest bloopers; when she was reciting the
repeated line "I don't want to die," Grant got so intensely into the scene
that he moved a bit too much and her watch hit the copy stand, ruining the
take.
But
the screams have to be balanced with quieter, heartfelt acting to create
a convincing show. Michael Sinterniklass, who acts, directs and owns a dub
studio in New York, mentioned that balance in the case of Space Pirate Mito,
which starts with the appearance of a slapstick comedy, then reverts to serious
emotional drama in the middle episodes. "Sean Schemmel directed Mito," mentioned
Sinterniklaas (and Schemmel did more than his share of screaming in Dragon
Ball dubs). It's (Mi)to got some incredibly deep veins. It gets really heavy,
and very wacky and funny. This was Schemmel's first directing job. His being
very wacky helped, and his being a hardcore sci-fi fan." Sinterniklaas emphasized
how difficult it was in Mito to strike the right balance between being funny
and being serious.
Acting
is the carefully measured act of matching human emotion for stage and the
screen. It requires careful study of the human condition and how people react
to emotional stress...but that doesn't explain why voice actors have to scream
so much. There's not much preparation for playing a superhuman teenaged fighting
machine, which is one of Kyle Hebert's Dragon Ball dub roles for Funimation.
When Hebert started portraying Gohan and started recording voice tracks for
his first fight scene, he tried to save his voice by getting close to the
microphone and screaming at half voice. That didn't fool the voice director,
who insisted that Hebert move back from the microphone and scream at full
voice. Because of audio compression and the reasonable volumes at which most
people watch anime, it might not sound as if characters are talking or screaming
loudly, but they are - and the actors at the second Saturday panel spoke
about their loud experiences.
Vic
Mignogna, who doubled at the voice acting panels in the same way he doubles
on roles at ADV Films and Funimation, told how he had a Dragon Ball role
that required a lot of yelling. He started making screams at one o'clock,
and his voice was gone by three o'clock, so far gone that he couldn't talk
normally for another two weeks. All of that, of course, didn't endear Mignogna
to the people who expected him to record tracks as ADV, but he got away with
it.
Tiffany
Grant's biggest screen screams came in the dub of the Neon Genesis Evangelion
movies for Manga Entertainment. She yells up a storm in a battle scene which
features an acting crescendo worth of the transition from the third movement
to the fourth movement in Beethoven's fifth symphony. Yet, the quiet beginning
of that scene had one of her biggest bloopers; when she was reciting the
repeated line "I don't want to die," Grant got so intensely into the scene
that he moved a bit too much and her watch hit the copy stand, ruining the
take.
But
the screams have to be balanced with quieter, heartfelt acting to create
a convincing show. Michael Sinterniklass, who acts, directs and owns a dub
studio in New York, mentioned that balance in the case of Space Pirate Mito,
which starts with the appearance of a slapstick comedy, then reverts to serious
emotional drama in the middle episodes. "Sean Schemmel directed Mito," mentioned
Sinterniklaas (and Schemmel did more than his share of screaming in Dragon
Ball dubs). It's (Mi)to got some incredibly deep veins. It gets really heavy,
and very wacky and funny. This was Schemmel's first directing job. His being
very wacky helped, and his being a hardcore sci-fi fan." Sinterniklaas emphasized
how difficult it was in Mito to strike the right balance between being funny
and being serious.
