This is no knock on Pixar or other animated films to date, but I must admit that even before I knew the technical reasons why, the voice acting of two films, Monster House and Surf's Up, stood out to me. They had a quality, an improvised/interactive quality lacking in other animated films.
It turns out that in both cases the actors were all in the same room recording at the same time. They overlapped. They improvised. They acted against each other in a way that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for voice actors sitting alone in a booth.
Should this be a new trend? Do you like it more? Less? Didn't notice? Don't care? I think I would at least like to try taking this approach for my own work in the future and see what happens.
My preference would be for the actors to be in the same room. I think that it allows for a more authentic and natural exchange of dialogue since the actors are interacting with each other. I think the actors who played Timon and Pumba from The Lion King also recorded their lines together.
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As far as I'm aware, there are some instances when two voice actors will record together. But yeah, I see what you mean, you can get an energy when you have more than one voice actor working off eachother.
--Z
In a lot of TV animation, the actors do record together for time and financial reasons. There are also a few scenes in Toy Story where Hanks and Allen recorded their dialog at the same time.
Seinfeld did his recordings in the same studio w/ the other actors for the BEE MOVIE.
http://finnfactory.blogspot.com/
The actors say that's much more conducive to good acting and responses.
Pat Hacker, Visit Scooter's World.
i think Dreamworks did that with El Dorado and i think it worked well. I dont think it can harm a performance if actors are in the same room and get to play off each other. i think it can only make things better.
I 'd love to see the next step where the actors actually get to act out the scenes with head sets and/or on a sound stage. That way you can get the vocal sounds that go with the physical activity (jumping,landing,fighting) to sound more convincing. Anyone agree?
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if you look at the videos of people recording you will see that they do go through many such motions
This is exactly how Monster House was done and you can really hear it in the voice acting. I think it's one of the best examples of over all voice-acting in an animated film that I can think of.
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Oh WOW!
Yeah, I just watched Monster House and that's what I was talkin' about.
(Someone is always one step ahead of what I think is a new idea)
Worked really well I reckon. You can't get that authentic "running around out of breath" effect unless you're actually running around, out of breath.
I think all this is a reflection of the realism in the animation. What I mean is:
The more believable the animation is, the more believable it's soundtrack has to be.
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It certainly isn't the worst idea. Don Bluth wrote about All Dogs Go To Heaven that Burt Reynolds couldn't pull off a convincing animated dog's voice before Dom DeLuise joined them and they recorded their parts together.
My sister likes The Angry Beavers somewhat, especially because the dialog between Dagget and Norbert overlaps and sounds so improvised sometimes.