As many of you know, I’ve been the Voice Director on a lot of cartoon shows. Because of that, Tom Hancock sent me this question…
I was listening to one of Jim Cummings’ podcasts. (These are wonderful, BTW) He had on Bill Farmer and Rob Paulsen and they were reminiscing about all the fun that they had recording voices for various shows. They would all be in the studio together recording the scenes and they would end up breaking each other up, laughing and having a wonderful time so much that the recording sessions would go way over time. It was Bill, I think, that said that that was the reason they now only record individually and not as a group. Is this true? I would think that recording in a group would bring a lot of synergy to a session that would show up in the final product. How do you do your voice recordings now? Did you ever do them in a group?
I did 100% all the voice sessions I directed in groups with everyone in the studio together. Once in a while, one actor was absent for a good reason and that person was recorded later. But to the extent possible, we had everyone in a studio, each actor with his or her own microphone and we’d record the cartoon in sequence, stopping for occasional redos or extra takes when necessary. That was how it was usually done in the old days for TV cartoons. For movies, it was more common to bring each actor into the studio and do a session recording that actor’s lines, then it would all be edited together.
Things have changed. These days, a voiceover actor — for cartoons or most other gigs — needs a good home studio and must learn the technology necessary to link up with the director online. Some shows still bring the actors in as a group but for the majority of cartoon jobs now, the actor is at home in his or her basement or den or whatever. A lot of them have literally set up their home studios up in closets. They need to get away from the noise of passing cars or birds or gardeners with leaf blowers.
They may all be online at the same time, linked via Zoom or a similar program. They may be linked individually to a director and an engineer (or whoever) and record just their lines with no other actor involved at that moment. There are many variations but it is no longer the norm to have all the actors in the studio at the same time doing the script like a radio play.
Like I said, that was the way I always did it and it was a lot of fun and, I think, it usually resulted in a better voice track. The actors could all learn from each other and you had more organic performing, acting against a co-star who was two feet away instead of in some other zip code or recorded at a different time.
There are advantages to the home recording method, not the least of which is that actor doesn’t have to shave and shower and drive half an hour or more and find a parking spot…and he (or she) can from home record for one show at 11 AM and another show at Noon and yet another at 1:00. For some, I’m sure all that outweighs the benefits of group, in-person recordings. I doubt though that anyone who worked under the old method would disagree that something has been lost…a sense of community and camaraderie and maybe the chance to learn from one another.
A lot of folks think the at-home recordings started because of COVID…and of course, for a time, it was safer to do things that way. It would be more correct, I believe, to say that the industry was already moving in that direction before COVID but the epidemic caused it to become more of an immediate necessity. Suddenly, everyone had to get home studios and learn how to use them properly.
I didn’t hear the podcast you mention but I doubt Bill Farmer said the change was because group sessions were running long. I think it was a matter of the technology becoming better and cheaper for home studios and for some producers to decide it was more efficient for their needs. One of these days, I’ll probably voice-direct a cartoon show that way and I’ll have more to say about its pros and cons.
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