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Maybe christian bale should check this one out so he can finally do a decent batman voice in the next movie.
Warning: This is a very real and frank look at the business of Voice Acting. Watching AiVA could change your perception of Voice Acting forever.
So you can't say they didn't warn you. Real and frank are exactly the words I would use to describe this documentary. I would also use the very important word good.
One of the draws of AiVA is obvious: you get to see the people the voices belong to. A corollary of this is getting to hear the voices the voices belong to: you can hear the normal voice from which all the others derive. And there are plenty of voices to be heard. Nearly a hundred actors participated in the project. Most of them are from the L.A. area, as you might expect, but there's a good sampling of New York and Texas talent as well. The range of experience represented is very broad. Hopefuls who apparently haven't done any shows yet rub shoulders with old hands who go back to the Robotech days and beyond. I'm not going to waste my time and yours explaining why it's fun to hear and see all of these people. If you don't already know, I can't tell you. But AiVA has an appeal beyond that - one that's something more than being able to put faces on the performers you've loved to hear so many times, or seeing the places where the magic happens. I didn't expect the show to have that extra point of interest; I also didn't expect it to interest me as much as it did.
For the real heart of AiVA is not the actors but the art of acting. I am not an actor myself; nor do I have any aspirations to be one. But that didn't matter. The stories, the information - everything from general career advice to the nuts and bolts of a recording session - all of it held me to the very end. Sure it's talking heads, but it's what the heads have to say that counts. Throughout all five episodes I consistently found myself enlightened and entertained.
The plan of each episode is simple enough. Pick a topic - "What is a Voice Actor?", "The Process", "Finding a Way In", "Advice", or "Is It Worth It?", introduce it with a short animation, and arrange an assortment of interview clips that pertain to the topic at hand. At certain points, intercut these with footage from a recording session, or hilariously appropriate anime scenes. The interview segments are packed with great material. There are plenty of stories about everything from getting into the biz to working on particular shows. Even if you go into the show as a fan rather than an aspiring actor you'll come away having learned quite a few things. Some of this will be good old fashioned dos and don'ts: get a demo, take as many classes as you can, audition as much as possible, show up on time, be nice to your sound engineer. Some of it will be information you need going into a job: the people you're auditioning for want you to succeed; give what you're asked to give...and then a little more. A few segments are nitty-gritty practicality: memorize as much as possible so you can focus on delivery; eat green apples to help take away the squishy mouth-sounds that get picked up by the supersensitive microphones. Other parts are downright insightful: get the best education you can - the more well-rounded you are as a person the better you'll be as an actor; or "persistence is omnipotent." There is some topic overlap between episodes, but it really serves more to link the episodes into a coherent whole rather than feeling redundant. And there's a logical progression to the arrangement of the clips. If one actor tells you voice production lessons are critical in being able to generate a character, before long another will give you a technical demonstration of how to talk like Sean Connery.
The extras are a very good icing on an already excellent cake. The vocal warmups presented are not the sort of thing to practice in public, but are nice to know just the same - and they really do help you speak better. The virtual voice actor segment duplicates a brief part of a recording session, one each for male and female roles. There's nothing like putting yourselves in the actors' shoes to get an inkling of what the job's like, and this works about as well as it can within its restraints. (A DVD-ROM version with increased interactivity, e.g. the ability to actually record your own voice and play it back with the clip, would be utterly righteous.) "Words of Wisdom" is a slideshow of index cards with advice for actors on them. (Have your pause button ready, though: some of them go by awfully quick.) Much of it is repeated from the main program, but having the bulk of it in one place is useful. Finally, segments related to one another but unused in the show proper, "Are You a Fan?" and "Does it help?" are included. These are as good as the rest of the show but have the added interest of being a rare topic on which the opinions diverge. The consensus during the show itself was nearly unanimous on all points.
At the end of the day, what really impresses me about AiVA is its completeness. It really does give you the whole story behind voice acting: it doesn't shy away from the frustrations or other less glamourous aspects of the profession. The endless treadmill of auditions; the early days of hardship, piled-up bills, and refrigerators getting emptier and emptier; the times when throwing in the towel seems like the only option (sometimes mere days before a big job comes along); the stress of never knowing where your next job is coming from; necessary separation from family and friends back home - all of that is laid out in full view. AiVA never shys away from the cost of the dream. Nor does it conceal the rewards. There's always a positive anecdote or piece of inspiration somewhere around the corner. Most of the things said by the participants were new to me, but with even those that weren't I'm glad to have them all together and easy to reference. The interviews were good in themselves, but at the same time, I can't help but think that the skillful selection and arrangement of the clips is what gives the show its drive. Very large bouquets are deserved by the editor and director.
In short: AiVA is an entertaining, well produced, insightful, honest, and thorough glimpse into a funny, heartbreaking, terrifying, maddening, inspiring, and fulfilling way to make a living. And it's one that's been worth the wait. Anybody with at least a passing interest in the profession will get something out of this. And even if you don't have an interest going in, you probably will by the time it's all over.
Adventures in Voice Acting is the first show I've seen that has really gotten to the heart of American voice acting and shown in no uncertain terms what it is, how it works, and how mindblowingly tough it is to get into the business. It's not quite a documentary, as there's no real plotline to follow of any sort, but it's not quite a DVD "how-to" manual, either. In the course of a little over two hours, we get snippets of interviews from (I'm guessing here) about 100 people who've worked in the anime industry. All of them share their stories about voice acting in anime, from their big breaks to how they prepare for a role and how they deal with rejection (an ongoing theme). At times, it's a little dull, but at other times it's fascinating. March Madness On Demand is a great way for people to watch college basketball. It's funny that most people that are college sports fans root for teams from universities and colleges that they never went to! March Madness On Demand is a software bundle that you can download onto your cell phone (only for smart phones) and with a broadband internet connection get the game broadcast to that phone. It may not take payday loans to download the app, but at the least you can get a news feed to see the scores. If you have a desire to see teams prevail from universities you never went to from states you have never seen compete, March Madness On Demand might be the thing for you.
