If the voices of all the chipmunk characters are going to be made to be high-pitched and squeaky, why do the producers bother paying for celebrity voice-over work when those voices will be unrecognizable anyways??
shareFarris, Applegate, Poehler, Gubler and Long because they have good comedic timing. Jesse McCartney because, he is, in reality, actually a really good voice actor, and he's got a built in fan base as it is. All of them because you need actors who know how to slow down their speech and talk 3-5 octaves higher at the same time: so when they speed up the voice tracks, the end result sounds at least somewhat believable. Its not like they just record them talking regular.
shareThat last bit is BS - they can edit the speed of their voices surely.
They only got these people for the poster.
Take Shelter Film Review!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/reviews-6
No, the thing about them doing the voices slowly is true. I watched the making-of on the other movies. It's hilarious to watch! I don't know how they do it and continue to maintain their timing.
shareNo, the thing about them doing the voices slowly is true. I watched the making-of on the other movies.
That is because you're an idiot; and as an idiot you don't appreciate quality over quantity.
Raising the pitch requires increasing the frequency. The most common way of doing that is to speed up the sound. THAT is done by downsampling which removes recorded samples at given intervals; 2x faster and 2x higher pitch means removing 50% of the data recorded.
NOW, this also causes distortions because of aliasing due to being below the nyquist frequency. They cannot just record it at a higher sampling rate because they will NEED to downsample for distribution (which means MORE, not less, distortion). Oh, don't know what smart people words mean? Too bad, you're an idiot, go educate yourself, learn it wrong, and still remain an idiot.
What does all of this mean? They hired people who knew their DSP and didn't just use a "chipmunk program" as an idiot like you would.
Yes, there are other ways of doing this; you can mix it with a higher frequency sinusoid and filter out the lower band; this introduces other distortions (since it is additive frequency instead of multiplicative) and requires a rather sharp cut off for the lower frequency portion which can become quite noticeable as the "chimpmunk voices" do have low-frequency components which would also be cut off.
Wow...you're a bitch. Congrats!
The rest of your post is irrelevant due to your attitude. I'm sure that's what you wanted accomplished?
"I watched the making-of on the other movies. It's hilarious to watch! I don't know how they do it and continue to maintain their timing."
I'd like to see that. Do you know where I could find a vid?
"Yay, faint hope." - Rodney McKay
All of them because you need actors who know how to slow down their speech and talk 3-5 octaves higher at the same time: so when they speed up the voice tracks, the end result sounds at least somewhat believable. Its not like they just record them talking regular.
I still wish there was a reasonable answer to this question, I mean I understand the idea of drawing an adult audiance with familiar "stars" but in this case, they're unrecognizable anyway and Janice and Ross Jr. have been doing the voices for a couple decades now, no one could possibly know the characters better then them.
"You win some, you lose some. But you live, you live to fight another day."
The thing that gets me is that the only people who know that these celebrities are the voices, are the people on IMDB. I mean, the regular adult audience is gonna go "Oh, that's Anna Faris, there. Ooh, that's Amy Poeler for sure" There names aren't all over the posters. Their names aren't even announced in the trailers. They could have hired professional voice actors to do the voices. The "Alvin and the Chipmunks" brand is strong enough, even if they drop the celebrity voice actors.
shareActually, I think Mathew Gray Gubler has a pretty distinctive voice, even in chip form. The rest, can't tell.
Every now & then look around. Drink it in. Cause this is it. It might all be gone tomorrow.
I'm glad you said that because I was telling my sister the same thing today after we watched it and she looked at me like I was crazy.
__Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.- Einstein__
It's funny people are complaining about the big names. They're right, of course. The only reason I found out that Simon was voiced by Matthew Gray Gubler is through Matthew's page. I was a fan of M.G.G. before as he is in one of my favorite crime shows, Criminal Minds. It makes no difference to me. I love Simon. I was going to appreciate the voice actor no matter who it was. But I love Matt's comedic timing.
shareIt's just another way of Hollyweird taking work away from hard working voice actors and giving their payday to talentless mainstream Hollweird actors.
It's quite pathetic because most of the people in the voice acting business have far more talent that 90% of actors & actresses in Hollyweird.
It would be so much cheaper to try new or rising voice actors. It's not like any of the voice actors involved have a strong enough following to attract any new fans.
shareI share the OP's confusion. I have NEVER understood the habit of putting celeb voices with animations. Overall they're just NOT as good as professional voice actors, and sometimes stick out really badly. I never liked Cameron Diaz in Shrek, it never sounded right. If I was a voice actor, I'd be pissed.
share[deleted]
Agreed. I didn't know anyone famous was the voices until the credits rolled in the first one and then I wondered, what was the point of getting them? Sometimes it works (Mike Myers as Shrek was perfect), but you rarely need it. When they had James Woods do Batmans voice in Crisis on Two Earths, it was horrible, absolutely horrible. It's the only DC animated movie I never finished.
We Are The Corps!! "Left the GL boards after two years when the trolls showed up."
"When they had James Woods do Batmans voice in Crisis on Two Earths, it was horrible, absolutely horrible."
Correction: James Woods did the villanous Owlman in that film, he wasnt so bad but William Baldwin did Batman there and was indeed terrible. Should've just gotten Kevin Conroy, he'll always be the animated Batman for like two generations of fans now.
"You win some, you lose some. But you live, you live to fight another day."
My bad, I did mean to type Owlman, but must have wrote Batman by accident (I hated William Baldwin doing his voice as well). That was the only DC animated movie I have never finished and it sucks because I went out and bought the dvd (I think it was before I got my blu-ray player) only to hate the movie. I ended up just giving it away!
Agreed, Kevin Conroy is the voice of Batman!
We Are The Corps!! "Left the GL boards after two years when the trolls showed up."
The book, JLA:Earth 2 on which that movie was based is much better, check it out when you get the chance.
"You win some, you lose some. But you live, you live to fight another day."
Haha I take it we're both experts Read it, mostly, but again wasn't a fan. For the most part any polar opposite/parodies of heroes don't get me into it (Bizarro aside). Anywhere the CSA show up, from 52 to Trinity, it's not a good read for me. Just characters I don't enjoy. To me it's lazy writing (though I understand to others they might love it).
We Are The Corps!! "Left the GL boards after two years when the trolls showed up."
The real answer is that having celebrities doing the voices gives it promotional value. Not so much that having the name will attract an audience, but that a Christina Applegate can get booked onto the Tonight Show and Good Morning America to talk about the movie where a no name voice actor would not.
http://www.youtube.com/user/patbuddha
I still don't know why they didn't use Ross and Janice.
The original teaser trailer for the first film used Ross. Sounded better. (And yes, for those that didn't know, people did slow down the audio to verify that it was him. Absolutely is, can't mistake that voice for anything, because it's also Dave.)
Bingo! And for these celebrities, there is no easier paycheck than coming into a studio in your sweatpants and voice an animated character so a relatively insane salary.
I suspect for them it is akin to getting paid a ton of money doing a ridiculous commercial in Asia that will never be shown in the US.
But your premise is probably spot on - the studio can have Amy Poehler chatting with Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon about the movie, rather than some good but anonymous voice actor.
Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
maybe the focus shouldn't be on whether we recognize them, the actors probably have fun voicing the chipmunks. Alvin and the Chipmunks are iconic, who wouldn't want to be involved?
shareI thought the celebrity voices were useless. Anyone off the street could recite the lines and be chipmunkified to the correct pitch and pacing afterward.
shareI think it's worse when the animated film picks stars with recognizable voices to do the voice work. If it's not a good fit with the character it throws the whole film off. I've always hated the trend of A-list stars taking work away from voice actors who are known in the industry but maybe not by the public. I don't recall any A-list names in 'Beauty & the Beast' or 'The Little Mermaid' and both did great business.
I'm not buying the fanbase following the chipmunk films. The only people running out to see these crappy nonstop sequels are those who have little kids.
Sheldon:"Was the starfish wearing boxer shorts? Because you might have been watching Nickelodeon".