Rise of big voices in animated feature films

NEW YORK: Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone do it out of friendship, Sandra Bullock and Jane Seymour do it for their kids and Val Kilmer does it in memory of his deceased brother. No one does it for the money.

Top Hollywood stars are eschewing the hair and make-up trailer and hitting the recording studio in droves to lend their famous voices to animated films such as DreamWorks studios' The Prince of Egypt.

The list cuts a swath across the film world's highest echelons: Kilmer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Glover and Ralph Fiennes in The Prince of Egypt, Gene Hackman and Woody Allen joining Stone and Stallone in Antz, Kevin Spacey in A Bug's Life and Jane Seymour in last summer's Quest for Camelot.

At first glance the work probably sounds like easy money for the stars. Donning a sweatshirt and jeans, they are whisked to the studios for a few hours of taping and can be home in time for dinner, all without putting a comb to their hair or lipstick to their insurably famous faces.

But the stars say voice over work is anything but easy, and as to the money which one studio executive said was "essentially scale", Seymour summed it up: "The pay is almost nothing. It's almost a joke."

Then why?

Kilmer, star of The Doors and Batman Returns, has the tall order of providing the voice of Moses in The Prince of Egypt, the animated, musical story of the Exodus.

"On a personal note, my little brother who died... knew the head of special effects at Disney. Nobody knew how, he was only 14 or 15. He was quite a brilliant kid and was just obssessed with animation," Kilmer said about his own association with the film.

"Thinking of his brother was another thing that was very moving to me."

Kilmer also has a seven-year-old daughter who he said attends Sunday school and "loves saying, 'My daddy's Moses'," he said.

Bullock, who shot to fame in the hit action film Speed and provides the voice of Miriam, Moses' Hebrew sister, was also thinking of her children.

"I've always wanted to do something for my kids that will last. It'll last forever," she said of the resilience of animated films, which often hold up for generations.

Seymour, who provided the voice for Lady Juliana in last summer's Quest for Camelot, agreed.

"You do it because you want to do someting the kids will want to see," she said.

It's fun to do something that they can watch and enjoy, and they love it when they recognise my voice," said the actress best known as television's Dr. Quinn, who has written children's books about a family of cats called Yum and Splat which she is working on adapting for an animated film.

But much of star power fuelling animated films may stem from the formation a few years ago of DreamWorks, whose founders - entertainment industry powerhouses Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen - have just a few friends in the business.

The acting community has been really generous in supporting DreamWorks," said Katzenberg. "It was a way for them to give us a gift."

"I was just so flattered that Steven Spielberg was actually on my phone, talking directly to me," Bullock said.

Jeff Goldblum, who played Aaron, Bullock's brother in The Prince of Egypt, wokred with Spielberg on both Jurassic Park movies and said he was "anxious to help out any way I could."

Katzenberg said he goes "way back with Gene Hackman", who played the villain in Antz.

Challenges

"And Woody (Allen, Antz's hero) has been a friend of mine for 15 years. Stallone - we go back years and years.

"Sharon Stone said if there's ever anything I can do to help you guys out," Katzenbeg recalled. So he asked her to play an ant princess, and love interest, for Allen.

Such non-traditional - and in a live-action film highly improbable - casting carried over into The Prince of Egypt as well, with Glover playing the father of Pfeiffer, who was cast as Moses' wife Tzipporah.

But the actors say the unique opportunities afforded by voice over work also present unique challenges.

I think it's the hardest form of acting in the world," Katzenberg said.

Deprived of their physicality - faces, eyes and gestures - the actors must put their all into their voices. "Your voice has got to be its own physical body," said Fiennes. "It's thrilling... but very exhausting."

Bullock noted that "we got to use our bodies and eyes, but you just don't see it."

"It's such an alien environment," Kilmer said of the experience in which he and Fiennes, who plays his brother, recorded their scnes at different times thousands of miles apart.

"Jeff would use storyboards and pointers and give very specific directions, and I thought, 'Why are you doing all this, I get the idea'," Kilmer recalled.

"Then when we started doing it I realised why - it's because there's nothing else to go by.

"It's really out there. They turn out the lights," he said, comparing the experience to being out in space.

Using his voice, Kilmer portrayed Moses from his youth through old age. As if that were not daunting enough, he also got to play God - or at least his voice - in the "burning bush" scene.

Kilmer said that he relies on vocal techniques in all forms of acting. "I don't think I've ever talked like I (really) do in any movie," he said.

As it happens, the actors physical bearings do enter the equation. They are videotaped as they record their lines, and the animators incorporate their dramatic expressions and gestures into their drawings.

They were thus able to capitalise on Helen Mirren's "innate gentleness" in creating the Egyptian queen who finds and adopts Moses as a baby.

And Patrick Stewart's booming, authoritative voice, so familiar as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of the Star Trek television series, morphed perfectly into the image of Pharoah, the forbidding father figure of Ramses and Moses. - Reuters

Copyright The New Straits Times Press (M) Berhad
Source: Pg. 11, Friday, The Malay Mail, 5th March 1999

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