I Know That Voice

Seeing the face behind the voice of my favourite animated characters is something I've always been curious about. It's great fun to YouTube for voice acting in motion. Watching The Simpsons cast appearance on Inside The Actor's Studio when I was younger was pure magic and I've watched my DVDs of Futurama with the commentaries on several times. Fortunately both shows feature heavily in the documentary with Bender's John DiMaggio being a heavyweight presence here. There's two things that I Know That Voice wants to emphasise. A, it's a craft no less than live action acting. And B, it's way more fun. Gathering a great assortment of voice actors with names you'd recognise from the credits of the cartoons if not the faces, the way the film is brought together gives it a wonderful sense of camaraderie.

However, sometimes it can lead to it feeling like they're simply stroking their own and other's egos but the humility of some of the interviewees shines through. It is disappointing that it lacks an enormous amount of archive footage to show the voices in action. They do it often on camera, sometimes to an irritating extent, and you just wish they would provide examples. Oh well, perhaps the rights would cost an extortionate amount. They do great things with their limited budget here but it does suffer from overeager editing with a pacing that so afraid of us being bored that it instead exhausts our attention. I wouldn't say I learned much about voice actors or gained more respect than I already had, but it was fun and interesting.

7/10

This is a terrific 70-minute documentary that goes on for 90 minutes. A huge cast of exceptional voice talent tells how they got to do what they do, why they like doing what they do, why they do and don't get the recognition they deserve, and other green room stories. Each and every interview is compelling and informative in and of itself, but after about an hour the aggregate doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Although the filmmakers have broken the continuity into subject areas and the online editors have done a gorgeous job creating transitions and effects that add to the storytelling, one comes away from "I Know That Voice" knowing what it's like to be a voice actor, but not how a voice actor does her or his job. The film doesn't show it. A major off-putting stylistic decision was having the interviewer sit so far off eye-line axis that the viewer feels excluded from the conversation rather than brought into it. This is a loving tribute to unsung people, pleasant but not memorable.

John DiMaggio and his friends tell the story of voice acting, and nobody tells a story better than people who do funny voices. It's raucous, wild, silly, and honest. About 45 minutes in you've heard about the beginning of voice acting in cartoons and all the principals have told you how they got into the business and what it means to them. It's a complete experience, a great ride, and you're well and truly satiated. And a little exhausted by all the high-energy emoting.

But there' was still another 45 minutes to go. What, I asked, could the next 45 minutes possibly be about?

Well, actually, it's about the business of cartoon voice-overs: how you get work, what it's like to need work and the insecurity of the business, what a recording session is like, what their agents do for them, how they work with directors, and the different kinds of work that they do. The part about doing voice-overs for video games was a scream. But it was all good.

Taken all in a piece, it's too much. So here's my suggestion; especially doable if you see this on Netflix. At 45 minutes, stop the movie; you've seen Part 1. Go do something else. The next day, see the rest of the movie -- Part 2. You'll enjoy the two halves immensely -- much better than the whole. That's what I did, and I whole-heartedly recommend the movie, when watched this way.

This documentary is all about the "secret world" of voice actors. And inside scoop if you will. They don't just make voices, they create characters. In some way, they're better than physical actors.

This flick gathers the best of the best in the business. Billy West, Mark Hamill, Seth Green, Phil LaMarr, Nolan North, Hank Azaria, June Foray, Tara Strong, Jim Cummings, Nancy Cartwright, James Arnold Taylor, Daran Norris, Rachel McFarlene, Bob Bergen, these are just a few names from the industry.

This film really does justice to the real heroes behind animation. Watching this will make you appreciate their job more as an art. I watch it every now and then just to remind me how great this is.

10/10

I've always said that if my plan to become a writer ever failed, I had a plan b: voice acting. And I'm a fan girl who pays attention to the credits to know the names of my favorites--Jim Cummings, Grey DeLisle, Clancy Brown--and I'm happy to say they are all interviewed for this film. Voice actor John DiMaggio takes us behind the scenes of his life interspersed with a history lesson about voice acting. Getting to go behind the scenes with DiMaggio for the final "Penguins of Madagascar" episode was fun and fascinating, as well as his appearance at San Diego's Comic Con. However, I felt the film could have interviewed more actors than they did (Rob Paulsen, for example) rather than spending most of its time devoted to the filmmaker's world. Overall, a great film for fans of the art of voice acting.