Why Voice Over Talent Is Important Today 

     When one hears about voice over talent, they tend to think the first thing: dubbing. It brings back images - for those old enough to remember - old Bruce Lee movies that came overseas and to the theater. It seems quite funny, doesn’t it?  

     But it’s so much more than that. Never mind that voice overs and voicing are done on a regular basis, from the cartoons we love to watch to movies, great voice over talent is essential. You may not think about it, but you enjoy the movie because of this talent.  

     You have to realize: all the movies you see have all this exciting imagery, sometimes loud explosions, along with other technical things that can happen during filming that you’ll never hear about. And if the movie is wrapped, but the actor is either at another location - which is the better of options - a director needs to ensure that dialogue is not only heard, but understood. Not only that, it needs to be believable. Let’s face it: nobody was going to take one of the “Dark Knight” movies seriously if halfway through the movie, Batman sounded like the cartoon voice of Lisa Simpson. It doesn’t work.  

     And yes: in the movie industry, they do have to get talent for voice overs. In the film “The Vampire Lestat”, star Aaliyah’s tragic death was during filming. Scenes after were filmed and voiced over by her brother. After Brandon Lee’s tragic death during filming “The Crow”, a voice over was need for the final scenes.  

     Don’t think of this as mockery. The talent to mimic a voice is quite incredible, and those that can who decide to use this talent are well compensated for embodying the people they are asked to imitate. After all: you hear a distinctive voice, you associate it with said movie or character. Many an actor has spent numerous times at the studio either voicing over for a film or cartoon, because they want the seamless. When the mouth moves, the words come out in conjunction. In films with explosions and gunshots, voice over talent is exceptionally useful, rather than spending more money to re-shoot the entire scene, but being able to synch it perfectly.  

     And for those that think this a useless talent: we define useless on what makes our world go round, in our own perceptions. A person that can step in and say; imitate Christian Bale flawlessly when he’s off shooting another movie or even step in for a voice over when one of our icons die: that’s a talent worth having. It’s a talent worth keeping. And it’s one that we have long benefited from, when a body really takes time to think about the entertainment value they’ve received in all the years.  

     Over dubbing and movie and film dubbing is really a fraction of the voice over work pie. So many other tangents such as phone or IVR, tv, radio, audio books and corporate narrations exist as well. In addition to simply being the narrator for a film documentary.

     Yeah, it makes perfect sense.