The Week in Voice: Three Goodbyes, a SONARR Win and Kindle+ Goes AI

Three goodbyes, a new awards night in Sydney, AI audiobooks slipping into Kindle+, and a prime minister who filed four seconds of her own voice. Here’s your week in voice.

Hello again. It’s Friday, and this was a heavier week than most, so we’ll start gently and work our way back to a smile.

Three voices we lost

Michael Forest, Star Trek’s Apollo, died at 97 in Sparks, Nevada. Trekkies knew the face. Anime fans knew the voice, often without knowing whose it was. After Star Trek he spent ten years dubbing films in Rome, then decades in Los Angeles booths, sometimes under the name Alfred Thor.

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In Prague, Otakar Jirák, the Czech voice of Alf, Manny the mammoth and Obelix, died at 77 after a long illness. His early career was mostly silent, as a mime, which is a gentle irony for a man whose voice Czech Television called “rich and honey-colored.” It came only a week after Czech dubbing lost Jiří Štěpnička.

And in Japan, Hiroshi Tsuchida, the Japanese voice of Lightning McQueen and of Grisha in Attack on Titan, died at 54. He’d voiced McQueen since 2006. For the film’s 20th anniversary in September he wrote: “Some things never change, however much the times change.” The actor who voiced Grisha’s son says the story couldn’t have existed without him. Our thoughts are with all three families.

A trophy and a casting call

Now for some good news. Colin Cassidy won the acting prize at Australia’s first SONARR Awards, the new all-audio night in Sydney, beating two audiobook narrators to it. He spoke with a Scottish accent for the first five years of his life and now has impression pages for Attenborough, Morgan Freeman and Stephen Fry. We assume the speech was in his own voice. Congratulations, Colin.

In Western Australia, Fremantle Press is casting local narrators for three children’s audiobooks, and two of the roles are for First Nations voices. The sample read can be done on a phone in a quiet room, and applications close on Saturday, October 31. Its head of sales and marketing wants narrators “who will treat younger audiences as their equals,” which is good advice for any booth.

Audiobooks, radio and who pays

Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited this week, and Kindle+ now pulls in AI-narrated audiobooks automatically. Human-narrated ACX books can join too, but only if the narrator was paid a flat fee. If you took a Royalty Share deal, you’re waiting outside for now. It’s hard not to notice who got the front door.

In Britain, the BBC dropped its planned studio for The Archers, so the show could be recorded outside Birmingham for the first time since 1951. More than 100 past and present cast members, writers and editors say it puts the show at risk. The director general says The Archers is “going strong and… going nowhere,” which is exactly what the cast would like the recording to do.

AI in court, and in the booth

A California judge signalled that the ex-NPR host David Greene’s voice case against Google can go on. The ruling isn’t final. Google says the voice belongs to a professional actor it hired, which led to our opinion piece on reading AI voice contracts twice.

Meanwhile Fish Audio launched an AI voice that takes direction like an actor, up to 16 characters in a scene. Mark a line [barely holding it together, forcing a smile] and it plays it, which is also how most of us read the announcement. This is the platform voice actors spent the summer asking to take their clones down.

And in Italy, Giorgia Meloni filed four seconds of her own voice as a trade mark to fight deepfakes. In the clip she says she’s Giorgia Meloni, twice. Anyone who’s ever slated an audition knows that feeling. Luca Ward, the Italian voice of Russell Crowe and Keanu Reeves, got his registered first.

And to finish on a smile

Andy García dubbed himself into Spanish for the first time, 14 years after Cristiada was shot, and kept his Cuban accent to play a Mexican general. “I’m Cuban, I know I still have my Cubanness in my accent,” he said. The producers didn’t mind. Fourteen years between the shoot and the dub, and we grumble when a pickup session lands three weeks later.

That’s the week. Be kind to your voice this weekend, drink some water, and we’ll see you next Friday.

Sources: Voice Over Herald reporting this week, linked above.

Lee este artículo en español: La semana en la voz: tres despedidas, un premio SONARR y Kindle+ con IA

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