I'm going to forewarn you, there is absolutely no reason for this post to exist, and I do not have a point, at all. (The Best Strange Movie Roles, 2)

Last year, video games took in $10.96 billion dollars for selling games to people. A recent videogame release, "Halo ODST," sold 2 million games in 24 hours, bringing in about $160 million. In one day.

That was on September 22. The weekend before that, Hollywood took in about $83,000,000 for the top 12 movies then in release, over three days. So, Halo ODST took in $6,666,666 per hour, while all of Hollywood combined took in $1,152,777.

What to make of all that?

I don't know. Why ask me? I just thought it was interesting. I only got to thinking about it because I was looking around IMDB today as I decided which Strange Movie Role I'd talk about today, and I stumbled across John Cleese's page, and saw that John Cleese played something called "The Bomb" in something called Starship Titanic. I'd never heard of either, so in lieu of doing any actual work, I "researched" what this might all be about, and found out that Starship Titanic was a video game, released in 1998 (they had video games in 1998? It seems to me like we barely had video in 1998...) that was "written" by Douglas Adams, one of my favorite writer ever.

Starship Titanic was a game based around a spaceship that crashed, and the player had to go onboard the crashed spaceship and do various things while interacting with other various things, not unlike every single video game ever, more or less, from Adventure on up to Halo: ODST.

And, am I the only person who thinks that we are far overdue for a Halo:OCD parody, in which a videogame player has to go through a ruined city invaded by aliens, and try to put things back into some semblance of order, using his laser to blast out the few remaining windows of a tenement so they all match, and then lining up the rubble in order of size? How did everyone else in the world miss that? I thought the Internet was made for snark like that. Do I have to do everything?

Anyway, reading up on Starship Titanic made me wonder about voice-overs, and more importantly, about voice-over work on video games, and whether, as I always thought, voice-over work would be a piece of cake, letting me sit at home and record some lines and then collect my checks for millions of dollars.

It sure seems that way, doesn't it? Especially for videogames, where I imagine there's not even any rehearsal or anything. Because while in a cartoon you have to have the voice match what's onscreen and have to do it in varying manners, once frightened and once mad and you have to react to other actors, too, so that your kung-fu-fighting panda doesn't appear to be lost in the world, responding with wildly varying emotions to the ... um... was Dustin Hoffman's character in Kung Fu Panda a koala? Or what was he, exactly?

And, for that matter, are there turtles in China? Because it seems like they made an effort to have the animals in Kung Fu Panda be actual animals you could find in China, which is where I assume Kung Fu originated -- and I note that I assume that because Kung Fu Panda is set in China. That may be circular logic, but it doesn't mean it's faulty circular logic.

While doing voice-overs for cartoons might approach real work, using "work" in the loosest possible sense that there is, voice-overs for video games wouldn't seem to even have that, because voice-overs for video games don't have to make sense or react to anything, really, as anyone who's ever played Madden NFL can tell you. Listening to Videogame John Madden's commentary as you play the game shows you just how detached from the game a voiceover can be, as your characters line up to go for it on 4th and 37 from their own 1 yard line, and Videogame John Madden prattles on about how the coach really is trying to establish the run, even though your last 13 plays in a row were "Hail Marys."

Then again, that's not all that different from Real Life John Madden commentary.

Reading about Starship Titanic was fascinating in the way that doing something like that, rather than the stack of work off to my left, can be fascinating, in part because the game is practically prehistoric, coming out in 1998, but was heralded for its revolutionary voice-over system in which a player could type into the game some sort of command, and then get any one of 10,000 phrases spouted back by the computer, phrases pre-recorded by various actors, including John Cleese. Supposedly, this made the whole thing very realistic, so realistic that they dubbed the system "Spookitalk," although I'm skeptical. Every time I've been told that there's a computer that can interact believably with humans, I first get sort of spooked out because I remember Hal, and then I get skeptical because I remember that this morning, I froze up my late-model, high-tech laptop computer by asking it to open two windows at once. Until computers can reliably not freak out if I triple-click on a link, I very much doubt that they can carry on "real" sounding conversations.

And computers in 1998 carrying on a "real" sounding conversation? I'm guessing that it went a lot more like a conversation with Teddy Ruxpin than a conversation with a "real" person.

But that led me to wonder: How does one become a computer game voice over actor, because if that is one of the rare jobs that like less work than being a lawyer who refuses to do any lawyering because he's too busy reading up on how to become a voice-over actor (and getting paid to do that!)(As long as my boss doesn't notice).

Which led me to discover that there are actual companies that specialize in hiring out actors to do just that: lend their voices to video games. Actors like Ashley Garrett, who says this about her voice:

Refreshing, engaging, and intelligent, the voice of Ashley Garrett is head and shoulders above the rest. Her cordial, pristine, and influential temperament involve the listener while soothing their ears. Ms. Garrett's voice shines in corporate narratives, educational recordings, and authoritative reads. Her voice is often described as friendly, but authoritative. She can be warm,sultry, smart, knowledgeable, energetic, dynamic, sarcastic, educated, genuine, sexy, strong, professional, intelligent and smooth.

I wonder if she can be all those things at once. And, I wonder, what's the difference between "sultry" and "sexy?" Or between "smart," "knowledgeable," "educated," and "intelligent?" Has anyone ever said, of someone else: "That person sounds pretty smart," to which the listener responded: "Nah, I'd say she sounds more educated than smart."

Clicking through Ashley's link then led me to Voices.com, which bills itself as the number one voice over marketplace, and which provides a blog that has invaluable information about the voice-over market, including that only 15% of the voiceover work goes to non-English speakers.

Take that, Swahili!

Voice-over work, according to Voices.com, is split about evenly among Men (37%), Women (38%), and "Both," (25%), proving that there is hope for the hermaphrodites of the world who dream of being the Voice of The Person Who Talks About The Features Of That One Car, or who dream of being The Voice That People Will Think Is Kevin Costner's, But They'll Be Wrong.

15% of all voice-over jobs go to a category called "Telephone," which kind of surprised me, because for as long as I've been alive, the telephone voices that I get have been the same person: There's the lady who tells me that the telephone I'm calling can't receive calls, there's the lady who tells me that if I want to leave a message I should wait for the tone (and I think they might be the same lady), and there's James Earl Jones, who was the voice of Bell when I lived in Washington, D.C., something I was startled to learn -- when I was an intern there, I once called up information and was startled to hear Darth Vader asking me what city I wanted to call.

The smallest category of voice-over work is cartoons, which is really surprising, because, other than the Telephone Lady, I didn't realize there was voice-over work, outside of cartoons. "Educational" voice over work takes up 11% of the market, which made me recall, again, the comedian who used to be on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update and who would do the character of "Dwight McNamara," the man who narrated all those educational filmstrips we watched in fifth grade, the kind that advanced one frame at a time.

I've searched time and again for Dwight McNamara online, and I've never found any clips. But I'm positive he existed, because I recall sitting around in study hall in 11th grade watching my friend Bob do his imitation of Dwight, and laughing. We were cool.

Videogame voiceovers make up less than 7% of voice-over work, according to Voices.com, because 7% of the work goes to "other," which includes not just games but also movie trailers, music jingles, music composition, and podcasting.

Which made me think: movie trailer voice overs would be even better work, wouldn't they?

Then again, I could never compete with the current Movie Trailer Voice Over Guy, so I stopped worrying about that and instead read up on "Caryn Clark."

"Caryn Clark" bills herself as "The Hip Chick Voice." She describes her voice as a:

hip and cool voice ... heard on VH-1, Disney, Nickelodeon, other television and radio stations and web sites across the nation and around the world. Her sound is fresh, bright, organic, wholesome, fun, young and hip, sweet, girl next door, yet can also be sexy and seductive, or down to earth, heartfelt and sincere.

Which just served to make me nervous that my voice isn't "hip and cool." So I listened to a couple of clips to try to figure out what made Caryn's voice hip and cool, while also being wholesome, fun, young, girl-next-door, sexy and seductive. I clicked on "Promo Demo" and got a spiel on "the health kick heard round the world," a Disney promo, which segued into Groomer Has It and then Go Diego Go.

That sealed the deal for me: There's no way to say the words Groomer Has It and still remain hip and cool. But Caryn then went a little further, and promoed Rock Of Love, making me feel icky.

Caryn Clark has a blog, as do many other voice over artists, people like "Paul Strikwerda," the "Ultimate European Voice." All you other Europeans, you're just pale imitations of Paul Strikwerda, who's agile enough to do English with a Dutch accent, but also to do English with an English accent, during which he sounds a little like... John Cleese. But Paul Strikwerda is not just the Ultimate European Voice, he's also... well, I'll let him tell you. From his blog:

As a former newsreader and anchor for Dutch radio, I set the standard for what is generally considered to be “Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands” or ABN. ABN is the accepted national norm for accent-free Dutch pronunciation.

Says who, Paul?

I don't really have a conclusion here. I just spent about an hour wandering through the world of voice-over actors, and I probably should go ahead and actually nominate today's MiniBest, which is...

Philip Pope, an actor from Starship Titanic, has played Jack Nicholson, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Frank Sinatra.

This is Philip Pope:


While it might be amazing to have a voice that is smart and educated, or great to have a voice that totally nails the Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands, I think it's far more amazing to be able to play Jack Nicholson, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Frank Sinatra, all while looking like a high school guidance counselor.

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