Although a writer by trade, Mr. Evanier has also been a longtime voice director on many of the animated shows that he has penned ...
TAG Interview with Mark Evanier
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He explained that the main work is casting the right voice to the right role, then getting out of the actor's way and allowing the performer to do what she (or he) was hired to do.
Mark informed me that the average number of takes he asks for on a given show is "one point one." As he notes in today's interview: He once had an actor in and out of a session so quickly that the performer was certain he'd been dismissed. It took a few minutes of reassurances to the actor's agent to convince the man otherwise.
Mark has been known to complete a voice session for a six-minute short in fifteen minutes.
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4 comments:
Sad to hear the Orson Pig joke was thrown out after getting it done (that would've certainly be worth checking out, funny India objects to a talking pig out of any talking animal seen in cartoons anyway, but whatever, it's just like being back in school and being told this stuff on sociology class and wished your opinion mattered). A simple editing for that country would've sufficed but shame if they have to be that tight on keeping it that consistent at all (unlike Japanese cartoons here).
Outside the U.S., the U.S. Acres segment was re-titled "Orson's Farm" for whatever reason, even paperback reprints sold in countries like the UK used that name. U.S. Acres, the comic strip itself actually ended during the airing of the first season of Garfield & Friends I believe (or second), so the property was already dead on the vine by the time the show ended around the mid '90's.
The Garfield strip started in 1978, the first TV special, Here Comes Garfield would debut in '82 just for historic reference. Garfield & Friends lasted from 1988 to '95. The last of the TV specials that Film Roman produced, "Garfield Gets A Life", came out in '91.
Hearing of Evanier's work on variety shows reminded me of "Pink Lady & Jeff" again. The program alone was a disaster before it even aired, but still interesting what was tried and for the era it was in (especially for any show hosted by a comedian and two Japanese pop singers whom never expected to even appear in our country at all, or learn the language anyway but that's another thing).
Wished I had saw that "Wacky WallWalkers" special. The name alone came from a rather short-lived fad-ish toy that itself originated from Japan that was basically a sticky octopus you flung at the wall in amusement as it either crawled slowly down or merely drop on the floor instantly.
God, I see someone answered my prayers and that special's up on YouTube now! Better enjoy it while it's there.
Hearing of the "record in one or two takes" reminded me of a moment in a Simpsons episode where Krusty recorded lines for a talking doll of himself, he comes in, reads off his lines and walks out, and the recording engineer just got the tape rolling and wondered where he was. Interesting to see how Evanier handled such direction in those recordings.
Semi-related: When Frank Sinatra was exiting Capitol records to set up Reprise records, he owed the company one more album.
So Frank came into the studio and said: "Okay. I'm doing twelve songs, and I'm doing each of them ONCE."
And, accompanied by orchestra, he went through each song, bam bam bam, on a single take.
I'm sure once you're really a pro, it's just that easy to get it all done in one shot and go on with your life.
I'll never forget the day I first met Mark Evanier. Of course, it was at Hanna-Barbera. From that day forward, I've had the pleasure of working with him, for him and challenged by him at San Diego's ComicCon QuickDraw.
There are few writers who are as good or prolific as Mark Evanier. I know. I've storyboarded more of his scripts than I can remember. He's awesome, and I'm not even sucking up.
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