Posted by sean at threshold9n.jpmorgan.com on May 22, 2002 at 13:11:17:
In Reply to: You've never seen me read. You have no... posted by zeta on May 22, 2002 at 12:59:38:
: idea how intense it can be. Trust me. Maybe you read as if you have only one tone but no...no not I. I went to uhhh (insert name of school of the arts)
But you've never seen Jennifer Lopez acting from a Kevin Smith script, either, have you?
And, aside from that, actors generally don't just sit in front of a mike with a script when they're recording voice-over. Maybe they haven't got it memorized -- depends on who they are and what their schedule is -- but conveying emotion through solely words and voice (which, incidentally, you aren't doing if you're standing in front of people reading, unless they're all blindfolded, a point I should have made sooner) is difficult enough without not actually knowing what you're going to say before you say it.
I've never done voice over work -- not that you have -- but I'm going by the numerous actors who I've seen speak of doing both and saying that acting in an animated movie is far harder than anybody ever gives it credit for and at the very least comprable to regular acting (generally people say harder, occassionally people will say "They're both really hard, and it's hard to compare because they're so different"). They have to get across everything that they want to in just their voice so that they don't have to depend on the animators to get it right.