The Villain and the Chimp

Before you play the video, please read below for context. 

Last Sunday I participated in my very first voice acting class, overseen by the talented and melodious Brendan Hunter, a professional actor and voice talent based in Calgary. Each student was asked to read two parts for a hypothetical Honda Civic radio commercial, the announcer role for that same commercial, and the protagonist of a short snippet of animation.

The video above captures my performance of that third scenario. In this exercise, students were asked to read the role of one of two characters in the scene, and to react to various sound effects noted in the script. Rather than playing off another actor in the booth, we had to imagine how a non-present actor might read the other character's lines and use that to inform our own interpretation of our dialogue. So you'll hear me reacting to lines and sounds you can't hear.

Before the engineer started recording, I informed Brendan that I interpreted my character as a "Disney villain fallen on hard times." Brendan threw a monkey wrench into the works - so to speak - by having students read the part a second time, but this time as a random archetype; in my case, I had to interpret the role as if I were a freezing monkey.

Play the video above to hear how it all turned out!

While I have no illusions about the challenge of turning this into a career, I had a great experience. Brendan is a very knowledgeable and encouraging coach, and I look forward to future classes.

If you're interested in voice acting, I encourage you to visit www.brendanhunter.com to sign up for classes. You can also follow Brendan on Facebook at facebook.com/brendanhunteractor.