Animated features may now be chock full of celebrity voices, but there is one growing area in the animated world where non-celebrity actors can still get a foot in the door: the animated television series. In addition to its long roster of high-profile animated features, DreamWorks has just begun casting for 13 episodes of a new animated series for NBC. Based on the Siegfried and Roy show at the Mirage, Father of the Pride is set to debut in fall 2004 with a story that revolves around a family of white lions, two of which are played by John Goodman and Cheryl Hines. The best news is this: Casting director Leslee Feldman anticipates there will be numerous roles for non-star actors.
"Unlike our feature animation, which has led us into a lot of celebrity casting," said Feldman, "there will be more opportunities in this situation for non-celebrity actors to come in and do it." Because NBC has already ordered 13 shows, Feldman will be casting the show for the next year. "It is going to be 3-D CGI animation like Shrek--the first time that will ever be on TV."
Now head of casting at DreamWorks, Feldman oversees casting in all features and television, though animation is one area she casts personally. It allows her to work very closely with someone she's come to know and respect quite a bit: Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Said Feldman, "I do particularly cast all the voiceovers because, for one, they are really fun to do and I work very closely with Jeffrey on them, but they also take at least three years to do. We worked five years on Shrek. It's a very long process, so it's just a bit easier if we just do it ourselves, as opposed to the live features. We farm [those] out because we may do eight to 10 a year."
Feldman has been at DreamWorks since the beginning. She met Katzenberg while working at Disney, and when he split off to form DreamWorks, she was invited to come along.
"I started in New York at an ad agency out of school," said Feldman. "I worked as an assistant to nine people who did everything from producing to business. They didn't have casting. And they said, 'What do you want to do?' And I thought, Casting. I didn't even really know what it was. But eventually what I did was I ended up starting a casting department at that agency, which was medium-sized, and then I went over to casting at Sachy and Sachy advertising, and then I was hired by Disney 12 years ago to be one of their casting directors."
While there, Feldman had the opportunity to see the current animation boom from the very beginning.
"Animation has gotten to be such a big business again," said Feldman. "I happen to have been at Disney when it started, with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, then The Lion King. When a movie makes, like, a billion dollars, everybody steps up and takes notice. And if you look at Finding Nemo--to open a movie at over $50 million a weekend?"
Indeed, two weeks ago Finding Nemo had the highest-grossing opening weekend--$70.3 million--in the history of animated film, surpassing Monsters Inc., Toy Story 2, Shrek, and The Lion King. While this trend might be great for studios and producers, it doesn't bode well for your average actor. Feldman pointed out that starting with The Lion King and Toy Story, studios have increasingly been turning to star talent to voice roles. It's tough to break in, admitted Feldman, and it's getting tougher.
"The time commitment is small, the work is fun, so you have so many celebrities who want to do it," said Feldman "And then so many of the working actors, the Alison Janneys and Paul Giamattis, they love doing it, too. There are so many levels of well-known actors who want to do this, so I understand that it is really hard for the unknown actors to crack it."
Hard, but not impossible. "If they are acting and they have any type of representation," said Feldman, "then they can certainly be considered. Even if they haven't done it before, we're usually happy to try to let somebody come in and read if we are putting the role out there."
Her advice to actors who want to break into voiceover? Take a good class with someone who can either help you make a demo or introduce you to casting people, though she cautions actors against scam teachers and spending too much money on demos, which she doesn't use.
"Voiceover agents probably listen to most of the tapes," said Feldman. "There are not all that many voiceover agents in town who are really good. There are probably 10 or 12 agents who work on everything. So if you were to do a demo, you just need to keep getting it to those people."
Feldman explained how voiceover work at DreamWorks is distinct from other studios. "One thing that is very different from most of the animation is that we don't use any cartoony voices. We approach all animation as if the actor were doing a regular on-camera job. And that is the key thing for DreamWorks animation."
Other dos and don't for auditioners? "Do come in prepared and be ready to do what you are there to do," said Feldman, "and do not be waiting to do all the other parts that maybe you think you could do, too. Listen to what the direction is, do what they ask you to do, and then you have to leave it. When they tell you, 'That's good,' they have what they need, then you stop."
Voiceover is a learned skill, Feldman pointed out, but it's something most actors can get the hang of quickly. "It is a different kind of acting," she said. "What you have to learn is that you only have your voice. You don't have your face or your hands to help you, and you have to be able to hear everything in your voice. Even for really big stars, the first time they come in, they try everything and they think, Oh, that was awful! I don't know how to do it! But they learn to listen to their own voice, and there are storyboards of the character that are completely boarded out, and that helps."
Has she ever had a celebrity who just could not get the hang of it? "It happens," said Feldman. "It's rare, thank God. But there have been a few. Somebody comes in and it's not right, they're not right for the part, and they usually know if it's not right, so instead of trying to fit it in, we'll say, 'We'll do another movie with you,' and try to move them to different project."
In addition to Father of the Pride, other upcoming DreamWorks animation projects include Shrek II, Sharkslayer (a feature about a fish Mafia starring Will Smith, Renee Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Jack Black), Madagascar (a film about city slicker zoo animals who get stranded on an island and can't cope, starring Chris Rock and Ben Stiller), and Over the Hedge, based on the comic strip of the same name, starring Jim Carrey, Garry Shandling, and Gene Wilder. Each of these projects involves a very long time commitment from Feldman.
"Unlike a live feature where there's a start date and we have three months to cast it," said Feldman, "for these the process is continuous. Some have a script ready, some don't. They are working closely with the storyboard artists, so often the characters change over time and different characters get added over time, so we stop and start for casting. It's a very organic development because we bring our actors in, they do a few sequences, and the way they interpret their character may change the story so much."
Does Feldman ultimately have much influence on who gets cast? "Our animation is so much Jeffrey in every area," said Feldman, "but I've worked for him for 12 years, and I do feel like I have some influence on who should get it. In animation we have two or three directors per film as well, and we all have a say, though at the end of the day, there is that one guy with whom all final decisions end up." BSW