Voice acting is the art of doing voice-overs or providing voices for animated characters in various works, including feature films, dubbed foreign language films, animated short films, television programs, commercials, radio or audio dramas, comedy, video games, puppet shows, amusement rides, audiobooks and documentaries.
Performers are called voice actors or actresses, voice artists or simply voice talent. Their roles may also involve singing, although a second voice actor is sometimes cast as the character's singing voice. Voice acting is recognized in Britain as a specialized dramatic profession, chiefly owing to the BBC's long tradition of radio drama.[1]
Voice artists are also used to record the individual sample fragments
played back by a computer in an automated announcement. At its
simplest, this is just a short phrase which is played back as necessary,
e.g. the Mind the gap
announcement introduced by London Underground in 1969. In a more
complicated system such as a speaking clock, the voice artist usually
doesn't actually record 1,440 different announcements, one for each
minute of the day, or even 60 (one for each minute of the hour), instead
the announcement is re-assembled from fragments such as "minutes past"
"eighteen" and "p.m." For example, the word "twelve" can be used for
both "Twelve O'Clock" and "Six Twelve." For some automated applications,
such as London Underground's Mind the gap
announcement, the sound of a voice artist may be preferred over
synthesized voices because the human voices sound more natural to the
listener.
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