Mark Oliver is a voice acting badass who does what he does in film, animation, and videogames. From Wood Man in the Mega Man animated show to Batroc in the Marvel Video Comics to Miles Dredd in the Max Steel franchise, and roles in Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord Of The Rings Online, Mark has a fascinating background as a professional musician, actor, and film director. He talks about being authentic, and the advantages you can find by engaging in life to find your motivations. Take a lesson from a voice of experience, and check out this...
Mark Oliver is a voice acting badass who does what he does in film, animation, and videogames. From Wood Man in the Mega Man animated show to Batroc in the Marvel Video Comics to Miles Dredd in the Max Steel franchise, and roles in Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord Of The Rings Online, Mark has a fascinating background as a professional musician, actor, and film director. He talks about being authentic, and the advantages you can find by engaging in life to find your motivations. Take a lesson from a voice of experience, and check out this episode with Mark Oliver!
Brian Talbot:
Have I offended you yet?
Mark Oliver:
I don't think of myself as being... I'm not easily offended.
Randall Ryan:
But, well if that's a goal, I mean, we can make that a goal.
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
Then throw the gauntlet down before you gentlemen.
Brian Talbot:
The gauntlet has been laid down. Yes, I will meet that goal. I absolutely freaking will. Ask anyone who's listened to more than three of these shows, they'll tell you.
THEME MUSIC
Brian Talbot:
As the grandson of German film pioneer, David Oliver, you might say that Mark Oliver was born into the business. While not exactly true, the apple sure didn't fall far from the family tree. You see, Mark Oliver is a voice actor, known for his portrayal of the sinister Lord Garmadon in Lego's Ninjago. Vancouver-born and UK-raised, Mark has become a common sight around the animation world. From Wood Man in the MegaMan TV series to Batroc the Leaper in the Marvel Superhero Adventures to Monstrux in Nexo Knights, Mark is a signature badass, both on TV and in video games. Some of his narration work includes Smithsonian's Hell Below and National Geographic's Hitler's Last Stand.
When he's not working in the studio as a voice actor, Mark spends his time working as an independent filmmaker, and his experimental short film, Elvis: Strung Out, received first prize at the International Festival of Oberhausen, Germany. And then to bring this all full circle, his latest film project is a feature-length documentary on the career of his grandfather, German silent film producer David Oliver. Lots of creativity going on here. So, Let’s Talk Voiceover, Mark Oliver.
Mark Oliver:
Yes, let’s.
Brian Talbot:
Thanks for being here. Thanks for spending a little time with us. How fun! A lot of our guests and a lot of the people we talk to are voiceover through and through, and while that's a fabulous way to make a living, my gosh, how fun is being an independent filmmaker?
Mark Oliver:
Well, it's all fun, and I see all of these things as being intimately connected. I mean I started as a film historian at school, and I guess that came as a consequence of being interested in my family's filmmaking legacy. So I really see, I really don’t see any division between any of these different areas of endeavor. Of course, I love voice acting. When I came back to Vancouver after living in New York City, someone said, "You love getting wasted at parties and doing all those crazy voices. Why don't you pursue that as living?”
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
… and I said, "Well, forget it because it's obviously a closed shop. It's going to be like trying to get signed up by the Freemasons or something.” But…
Brian Talbot:
There you go.
Mark Oliver:
… I asked a few people, and they made a few suggestions. I made a demo just using my own gumption, trying to figure out, well, what would people want? Some versatility, some variety. And I find that voiceover is immensely rewarding. It's like getting paid to go in and do your own primal scream therapy or something. When you're an on-camera person, you never get given the variety of roles that voiceover will present to you. And indeed, there are no laws at all governing how big these characters can be, and they're usually much larger than life, and I find it very gratifying to be able to, um, engage all of my imagination in the rendering of these different characters.
Brian Talbot:
Well, that is what makes it really fun. Because on camera, obviously, your physical attributes are the primary determination of what your character is or what kinds of characters you can be; unless the director's willing to stretch the traditional or the precast notions of what that character looks like. With voiceover, you truly can be anything, and that's the fun part of it all.
Mark Oliver:
Well, it also, it's ironic because we live in the midst of this extreme age which is so visually dominated, but sound is still such a mysterious component and affects people subconsciously in a way that they can't even put their finger on. Or, as I say, sound is like the, the thief that comes through the basement door of the imagination and affects people in an extremely provocative fashion. So I'd like to think of this endeavor of voiceover as being a revenge against this era that is determined 98% of the time by visuals. I mean, my God, if you could divorce the voice of Kim Kardashian from the image of Kim Kardashian, and just think, my God, who could this person be listening to this vocal fry? …
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
…like what does that tell me about this, this person? So I think about it a lot, and I have the luxury of being able to disappear into these different mediums. And I like to think that it gives me a fresh perspective when I return to the voiceover studio and attack this, that, or the other role. So you're correct.
Randall Ryan:
So when they told you that you could do voiceover but you could not continue to get wasted to do it, how close was that to a deal breaker?
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
You know you have to do these things carefully by stages…
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Brain Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
…so it took about six months. (Laughing) No, I thought it was fine. I mean I should clarify that I come from a family where language is really deployed by most of the people in it to make a living. I mean my father was a criminal lawyer of renown and became a judge of the Canadian Supreme Court and was really one of these kind of Perry Mason figures who very entertainingly was able to sway juries because of his command of the language. It was always a huge, huge thing, not even what you said so much as the musicality or cadence with which we were able to try and convey this, that, or the other point to win an argument.
Randall Ryan:
Right sure…
Mark Oliver:
So, so I think that was my jumping off point. I wasn't somebody who was a trained actor, was frustrated with an on-camera career and then thought, "Oh, I'll investigate voiceover." It's completely satisfying, without having to think about anything else. So I think I might have had a bit of an advantage, as I say, coming from this background where people could so deftly manipulate the English language to convey a point, win an argument, that sort of thing.
Randall Ryan:
Well, sure, if you grew up around that, I'm not an actor, but I had the same thing with my family where I grew up around all these people who, ultimately when they got older, they were salesman and politicians. My father ended up being a lawyer as well. That side of the family would get together, and they were really big on trading insults and arguments and it was all very happy.
Brian Talbot:
So it was like an adult sitcom-
Randall Ryan:
It was like an adult sitcom.
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
.. who were the Simpsons before The Simpsons.
Randall Ryan:
You had to learn how to speak and protect yourself or else you were just going to get run over.
Brian Talbot:
So what was the plan before that, Mark?
Mark Oliver:
Before all that? I mean I was a, you know, scrappy kid who cut my teeth in the punk rock scene here in Vancouver and was in a number of bands. And…
Brian Talbot:
Well, that explains the drunkenness.
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
That partially, partially explains it. And we'd had the good fortune of being selected by The Clash to open up for them on their Combat Rock tour, so we did a couple of shows opening up for The Clash. And you know once you get in front of 8,000 to 10,000 personal audiences, you're not going to go back to anything else. So I took care of everything here, wrapped up business, and you know moved to New York City. I guess I wanted to be eyewitness to what was going on in the world of hip hop in Manhattan. So I got to New York City around the summer of '84, I guess it was, and got into an R&B band based in Philadelphia, of all things, which was really cool because that was its own kind of university going from like the punk rock world of like, "Yeah, man, just wing it," to "No, man, you're going to like stay and you're going to rehearse these harmony vocals…
Brian Talbot:
Sure..
Mark Oliver:
… till four o'clock in the morning or however long it takes to nail this shit.”…
Randall Ryan:
Yep.
Mark Oliver:
So you know I met all sorts of people in the music world in New York City and Philadelphia…
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
Mark Oliver:
…you know I'd be walking down the street and someone would introduce me to a Delfonic or a Stylistic or something like that. And I loved that. I also loved the way that people were using language. It was so romantic and so expressive. So it's not like I, I had to sort of stay close to whatever influences I picked up from my family. I realized I loved everything about language and the musicality of it. So, I did okay and had some gigs doing backing vocals on people's records and stuff like that. But it was a tricky time to be in New York City through the '80s. It was a pretty hard-scrabble existence. Various things happened that meant I just couldn't live in New York City anymore.
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
Mark Oliver:
I came back to Vancouver around '97, which is when the drunken voices at parties started to really become...
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
…“I have to focus on these drunken voices (laughing) if people are going to take me seriously." And I attended a seminar as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival where people were demonstrating how to do these voices for animation. And there was a sort of a Q&A, and I looked at what people were doing. I thought, "Well, this doesn't seem too exotic. It's not too much of a stretch from being wasted at parties and doing this stuff for free." So I thought, "Well, why not?" I wasn't intimidated by studios…
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
… because you know I'd cut tons of demos and tons of records already, and you know was comfortable with going off, just leaving.
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
Mark Oliver:
So it didn't seem like too much of a stretch. When I showed up to my first session, 90% of the people in the room turned around and said, "Well, who the fuck are you?”
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
…Because I just sort of arrived.
Brian Talbot:
So it was a welcoming crowd. That's very nice.
Mark Oliver:
Yes, such a welcoming embrace. Because I was there doing this principal character, I'm sure everybody in that room would've thrown their hats into the ring to get that role, but here was this total stranger being a king of a planet in outer space. And um I'd like to think that I equated myself with aplomb in that environment, but I also had wonderful people to observe and study from, so I was able to learn a tremendous amount from just the very talented people who were working around me. They're still my colleagues to this day. You know since that time, I realized, oh my God, I have to take this thing seriously. It's not a party trick anymore…
Brian Talbot:
Right…
Mark Oliver:
… This could be a real thing. I looked at my first check and I thought, "There's got to be some mistake in accounting.” They couldn’t possibly…
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
….they couldn't possibly pay this amount of money for what we did. We were just goofing around.
Brian Talbot:
For what I did? Are you kidding me?
Mark Oliver:
We were just goofing around. And people assured me like "No, that's pretty much par for the course." And since then I had to really kind of conduct forensic research into the kind of voices that we use on a regular basis and certainly many other voices that, if they didn't already have a presence in animation, could quite possibly sometime in the near future. This was really before people had fast internet so that meant like…
Brian Talbot:
Sure
Mark Oliver:
… going to the libraries and studying regional voices and dialects and accents. And I realized I was just already interested in that…
Brian Talbot:
Yeah
Mark Oliver:
… I loved it. I realized I'd found my métier. So you brought up a really good point about when people ask you like, “Yeah, you know think about playing that game, that voiceover game.”
Brian Talbot:
How do you get into it? You become a student of it. That's the best advice I can give them is become a student of voiceover. So if you're going to play golf, then become a student of golf, understand everything about it. You want to be an actor, go become a student of acting. Figure out everything about it. You know all the same actors are in the Scorsese films. All the same cast members go from one Coppola film to the next Coppola film. So all these guys get their troops of people, it's like small theater troops, and they work with them because they know how to work together, and that becomes incredibly, incredibly valuable. That was something that I started doing when I started acting, and especially doing indie films and stuff like that. I found three or four core groups of people of writer/director/videographer teams that I could work with from project to project to project. That was just simply a result of becoming a student of what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And that's exactly what you were doing at that point in time.
Mark Oliver:
Yeah. I wasn't rolling my eyes contemplating all of the homework. I just kept returning back to the thought, "Oh my God, the English language is fascinating.”
Brian Talbot:
Isn't it though?
Mark Oliver:
It fascinates me. It fascinates me. I’ve been, I was very lucky, when I was in New York City, I had any amount of friends from the South who'd say, "Well, you should come down, come down to Tennessee for a week." And I would go down to Sewanee or be around Chattanooga and just to collar people on the street in a town or whatever. You'd be like, "Do you mind repeating what you just said?”…
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
… Not because I couldn't understand it the first time around, but it was just so beautifully delivered in such a lazy cadence. I just thought, "Wow, the United States is amazing. It's just a universe of voices." I'd think to myself, this is long before I got involved in voiceover, and I thought, "I'm going to file that away for future reference." I don't know why. And lo and behold, the opportunities arise where you can deploy that knowledge. When people ask me what to study, it's never been easier because you have YouTube, you have Vimeo.
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
Mark Oliver:
…and I never really, I don't really like to watch movies. I mean, I will, for references and stuff like that. But I find it to be a bit of a cheat. And if you wanted to craft something unique or something that belonged to you, then I'd rather be on the streets of Austin or whatever talking to people and not listen to Tommy Lee Jones.
Brian Talbot:
Matthew McConaughey trying to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Oliver:
Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. Side note, my dad, during the war, he worked for British Intelligence where he worked in a branch of MI5. And he spoke five languages fluently.
Randall Ryan:
Oh, my.
Mark Oliver:
He would be charged with the responsibility of apprehending SS or Gestapo men who are on the run with assumed Wehrmacht identities and have to spirit them through the different sectors of Berlin, French-held Berlin, Russian-held Berlin, etc., etc., to get them back to British-controlled Berlin. So that meant that he would have to slip in and out of different voices and accents and languages to do that. And so I was very lucky to have somebody like my father. He regarded all of this pursuit as, how believable do you want to be? You are being parachuted 10 miles behind enemy lines, and you must be able to pass unnoticed by the local populace…
Randall Ryan:
Yeah.
Mark Oliver:
…So I take all that sort of stuff very, very seriously. So I don't know whether people, when they listen to cartoons, for example, consider that I and many of my other colleagues approach all of this kind of forensic research with tremendous seriousness just to be able to give you a really compelling talking tomato, for example.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
Well, I think that's a really important point. The other thing that people do is, "I do a bunch of funny voices. I want to get in voiceover. I can do George Bush, 'Not going to do it.'" Well, no, that's Dana Carvey's impersonation of George Bush…
Brian Oliver:
Yeah.
Brian Talbot:
…So you're not doing George Bush. You're doing Dana Carvey doing George Bush. Now, if you had your original spin on it, and it was really, really good...
Randall Ryan:
Right
Brian Talbot:
..and oh, by the way, most people don't need impressions of other people. They need their own original characters. You know I was listening to someone not too long ago, and they're like, "Oh, I've got this voice, and it's this alien character, and so I'm going to do Marvin the Martian." No, no. That's someone else's character. That's not your original take on what it is.
Randall Ryan:
Right
Brian Talbot:
That becomes so important in being able to not only book work, but be authentic and be convincing and really make that character yours.
Randall Ryan:
Well, and that's one of the things that concerns me about some of the things that I see with internet casting and with people thinking that they can do this on their own is that type of lack of creative thinking. I have this stereotype in my head, and so that's what I'm looking for, and that's how I'm going to direct, or that's what I'm going to ask the actor to do without allowing that actor... Especially, I'll say this about Mark, you have done some of the best villains for me, period. Because they're not just villains. They're complex and textured.
Brian Talbot:
Not just badass, but scary badass.
Randall Ryan:
Exactly,…
Brian Talbot:
Yeah yeah
Randall Ryan
…just that psychological. Even if the script isn't really totally written that way, just that ability to dig in and get that. That's coming from you. That's not coming from me. It's not even coming from the writer necessarily. It's coming from allowing you to bring that piece to yourself. That's one of the things that really worries me with some of the trends that I'm seeing once you take out those people that understand what acting is. And I'm saying more on this side of the glass than on your side of the glass.
Mark Oliver:
Well, first of all, thank you for the kind and completely misplaced compliment.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah, right.
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
No, no. Well, now I know what kind of estimation I have to live up to next time, so the stakes are raised. Thank you.
Brian Talbot:
You just raised the bar. I hate that.
Mark Oliver:
You raise the bar. But it's true what you say. Because I talk to students and they feel safer choosing to be a facsimile of George Clooney or a facsimile of this person and the other person because they confuse that with a degree of professionalism and that these people, because they are famous actors, have a kind of a currency and value. Therefore, I, by extension, must as closely as possible approximate their voices. I say, no, because then you're never going to stand out of the crowd. As an actor, I really don't like being confronted with sort of sound alike projects.
Brian Talbot:
Oh, I hate those.
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, those are the most annoying things. My favorite answer, and I've yet to use it, but one of these days I will: "Yeah, we're looking for a Sam Elliott." "Well, you know you can call up Sam's agent and he'll put you in touch, and you can book Sam. If you're really looking for Sam Elliott, then he's available. He's alive. He's still working. You know go get Sam Elliott.”
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
Well, it could be laziness on the part of the casting person or the producer. I really don't know. Or…
Brian Talbot:
Yeah
Mark Oliver:
…that people just don't have adjectives at their fingertips to properly describe the characteristics that they're looking for.
Randall Ryan:
I think you've hit the nail on the head with that. They don't. I've sat in on other people's sessions, or I've been hired to do it, but they really don't want me to direct. So I'm listening to some of these people who don't do this, and I'm listening to these people that don't have reps, and they also don't have the imagination to do it. They don't know how to tell somebody what they're looking for, and it is exactly that. They don't have the adjectives. They don't have the stories. They can't get down to the musicality and to the kernel of what it is they're looking for. All they can do is shortcut it to “Um, yeah we're looking for something that sounds like Morgan Freeman. We're looking for something that sounds like..." fill in the blank because that's all that they can imagine. That's where you get the stereotypical read. "Well, we're looking for a villain, so [inaudible 00:20:27]. Like, "Ah, no.”
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing) I like that villain. That was an awesome villain. That was just-
Mark Oliver:
I worked on a religious-themed project.
Brian Talbot
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
Within this, within the stories, there's the character of Satan that they were trying to cast. I thought, "Well, this'll be fun. I can really sink my teeth into this…
Randall Ryan:
Umm hmm
Mark Oliver:
…challenge”, so I showed up for the casting, and I felt I was prepared. They said, "Mark, whenever you're ready, go." And so I started, and I didn't get past the second sentence before the casting person stopped me and said, “Um what's your name?" "Mark. Mark Oliver." "Mark?" "Yeah." "I don't know whether you got the memo, but um Satan in this story is the bad guy.” And…
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
he said it like a bad guy, "But the way it's coming out, the way you're doing him is, well, frankly, he's kind of sexy. Did we tell you that he was the bad guy?" I said, "Interesting observation. Well, I'm just going with the whole thought that Satan is a very seductive, attractive character.
Brian Talbot:
Thank you.
Mark Oliver:
Because he is so attractive, he will bend people to his will and get people to do a lot of things that they normally would feel very uncomfortable doing. Do you see where I'm going?" They're like, "Yeah. Did we say that he was the bad guy?”
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
I know and at the end of the day, they went with, [inaudible 00:22:00].
Brian Talbot:
Right, of course.
Randall Ryan:
Oh, man.
Mark Oliver:
... which is a very two dimensional-
Brian Talbot:
I was going to say, can we strip all the depth out of it?
Randall Ryan:
Have you seen Good Omens? Now, I know it's based on a book, but David Tennant?
Mark Oliver:
Yeah.
Randall Ryan:
That's brilliant because the lines are blurred, and the people are not two dimensional.
Mark Oliver:
Well, of course. I mean, you can go back to Milton's Paradise Lost, and the character of Satan is extremely attractive…
Randall Ryan:
And complicated.
Mark Oliver:
.. and complicated, which makes him far more provocative. So you think about what the struggle of good against evil really means as opposed to just being presented with a kind of cardboard cutout. It's a fascinating industry, and it's changing all the time. My God, I'm dazzled by the new types of stories that can be brought to the screen. I guess I'm waiting for the paradigm shift in storytelling as we experience it through episodic drama to make itself felt in the world of animation. I wonder if that's too much of a stretch. What do you think, guys?
Randall Ryan:
Hmm.
Brian Talbot:
I think we're well on our way. With all the adult animation that's out there, between the cartoon fun stuff, Simpsons and Family Guy and all that kind of pushing a comedic edge, and then of course all the manga and Japanese animation and then you have the animation networks or the comedy networks that are really heavy into the adult animation stories, I think that there is so much room for it. I think we're also much more willing to accept animation in place of live action to be able to enjoy storytelling, and I think the viewers are much more willing to accept that nowadays.
Randall Ryan:
Well, the lines are definitely blurred. I mean…
Brian Talbot:
Yeah yeah.
Randall Ryan:
…you now have all kinds of things where actors obviously are in there, but sometimes it's even the digital representation of the actor. It's a very short period of time before your mind just accepts it. You stop looking at what's CG, what's real. It's just all blends and it's all seamless. Then suddenly the panther is really a character.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah. What are you seeing, Mark? I mean you're in the middle of it. Are you seeing scripts and stories change?
Mark Oliver:
Well, I think that, to be perfectly honest with you gentlemen, I see a degree of trepidation on the parts of producers because it's becoming increasingly difficult to read the tea leaves of popular culture and where it's going. Are we going to see more and more shows that kind of target a niche audience? It's certainly difficult to find the kind of successes that have a universal appeal. For example, I don't know whether we could ever enjoy the success of something like Star Wars. Now we have lots of legacies, spinoffs of something like Star Wars. But within the animation world, I'm always pushing for new types of stories that can be brought to the screen.
We talk all the time, my colleagues within the voice world, about getting behind original content. But, you know, I can't hold it against somebody if they just want to goof off on their Sea-Doo or whatever all weekend long. They can do that. I'm always saying, "Let's get behind this idea, or let's get behind this idea and produce our own original content and see where it goes.”
Brian Talbot:
Well, you know, I think there's more and more people who are in voice acting that are interested in doing that. I'm starting to see radio plays or radio theater popping up as episodic or a serial podcast.
Randall Ryan:
Apparently the radio drama thing is a huge thing in the UK.
Mark Oliver:
I think it's particularly understandable in view of the fact that I think people just have overall screen fatigue. I mean I know I do. I'd like the idea that one could have the luxury of walking around and just listening to a drama. Interesting, you had touched on the career of my silent film producer grandfather. He was constantly approached by inventors to get behind this, that, or the other. My father was present one afternoon when some technicians in white lab coats wheeled a huge apparatus under white sheets into the office of my grandfather in Berlin. They pulled off the cover and plugged in cables and turned knobs. So my father got to see a very early demonstration of Fernsehen or television.
Brian Talbot:
Oh my gosh.
Mark Oliver:
They were trying to solicit my grandfather for investment funds. He watched this demonstration. At the end of it, he said, "Gentlemen, you have a most fascinating device. But I'm afraid, I don't know whether I can be of any help, because you see, I don't think people will have the attention span for something like this. People like…
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
MarkOliver:
…people like the escapism of going to the cinema. When they're at home, they have the radio, and they can perform any amount of household chores. But to ask somebody to be held captive by this thing for more than five minutes, I think it's too much to ask of the average man or woman. So I'm going to have to pass I'm afraid.”
Brian Talbot:
Oh my gosh.
Randall Ryan:
He turned the Beatles down too didn't he?
Mark Oliver:
He turned the Beatles down. He turned the Beatles down.
Brian Talbot:
Another show that did come to mind when we were talking about, can you just create an episodic that works with animation? The TV show Archer, I think, is brilliant. It's some of the best written stuff, and the characters on Archer are all just regular people.
Mark Oliver:
Yeah, it's true. I love Archer.
Brian Talbot:
They do have a lot of resemblance in the characters, and so they really do capture different aspects of the voice actors and put them into the characters. Then they have the scope to be able to make those characters broader and wider and much different than what a live action or in-person filming of that show would end up looking like. So I think there's room for it.
Mark Oliver:
You know I've tried to float any amount of projects, well, three, within the last year which were all going to be period dramas. You have to go like, "Oh, but there's another damn period project." So you think, "What are the logistics of that? Where we have to go? We'd have to go to Budapest to do that." But I would love to be able to take any one of those stories and just go, fine, this is going be rendered within the world of animation, and none of that is going to be a concern. We'll be able to take all kinds of liberties, etc., etc. I wonder whether people would accept dramatic stories that didn't depend on any kind of sort of slapstick or comedy from beneath the guise of animation. You can hide so many different types of stories that perhaps people might have been somewhat reluctant to hear if they were rendered on camera and so on. So I look to the future and would love to get behind the development of this, that, or the other thing.
I'd like to think that the entire industry was going to start embracing a whole slate of projects that were daring. It’s disappointing to see the same kind of story constantly reiterated. I mean I know that this is a business, and there's a bottom line that one has to pay attention to. But…
Brian Talbot:
Sure
Mark Oliver:
…appetites are constantly evolving. One only has to look at what happens within the world of episodic drama, and you realize, my God, those stories could never have been brought to the screen 15 years ago.
Brian Talbot:
I think there's room for evolution on it. One of the things that's really neat is that, because of technology, we're starting to see some convergence, right, across mediums. I saw a documentary, it was about the University of Texas mass murder that took place back in 1960... what was it, '66, something like that.
Randall Ryan:
You're not talking about the tower shooting.
Mark Oliver:
[inaudible 00:29:58].
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, the tower shooting. The way they did the documentary was amazing because they actually had police radio audio. Then they took all the characters... The whole thing was animated.
Mark Oliver:
What?
Brian Talbot:
It was a documentary-
Randall Ryan:
Wow.
Brian Talbot:
... that was animated. They took the characters and they cast them. So they had the different people talking about the experience in hindsight, and then actually being able to add voice to some of the cutaway live action scenes of what was going on at the moment. Then they were able to incorporate some of the original news broadcasts and police radio calls and stuff like that. What a fascinating way to tell a story through a documentary.
Mark Oliver:
Another shooter in the high tower in the University of Texas.
Brian Talbot:
There you go. So I think there is room for that kind of stuff. We'll see. So Mark, how much influence did your grandfather have on you growing up? Did you get a chance to spend a lot of time with him?
Mark Oliver:
Oh, no. Well, he passed away in 1947. But I know him from a fragment of silent film from 1916 where he makes an on-camera appearance. That's the only evidence of him moving through this bit of footage. I know him through…
Brian Talbot:
Wow.
Mark Oliver:
... letters and business correspondence…
Randall Ryan:
Sure.
Mark Oliver:
… and many, many photographs and through the recollections of people who knew him and worked with him. So his presence sort of loomed large over the house. I'm turning my head now, and I'm surrounded by all of the material possessions that my grandparents had in Berlin, huge pieces of furniture and drawings and paintings. It's as if this place here on the west coast of Canada had just been a room picked up and moved across the continents to somehow come to rest here, so…
Randall Ryan:
How cool.
Mark Oliver:
...surrounded by all of this. Of course, because I didn't know him personally, I'm always sort of going to try and imagine what he was like as an individual. It's sort of like Citizen Kane where the cub reporters are sent out with the stipulation, "Rosebud. Give me something about this Rosebud, Kane's last words.”
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing) That’s the quest.
Mark Oliver:
Yeah. I mean people go like, "Well, what a nerdy thing to do." The whole point of it is is that you and I and everybody who's been listening to this podcast have only ever known a world where there was cinema, where there were films. But people like my grandfather, there was a very small group of individuals who were going to prove the commercial viability of film. Because you have to remember that the biggest competition for movies when they first arrived on the scene, and by this, I mean, we're going back to the years 1903, 1905, your biggest competition would've been traveling stage troops where they would mount like a live X-ray demonstration in the theater. They'd set up an X-ray device and call this, that, or the other member of the audience onto the stage, and people would clap and shout and scream when they saw that person from behind this big pain of glass and you would be seeing an X-ray image of them. God knows how many [inaudible 00:33:27] rays those poor people were exposed to.
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Randall Ryan:
That's the first thing I think of, "And we create cancer.”
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
That is it. But that was the biggest competition for, that was the biggest competition for film. There was no precedent for it. I mean how could you make money from this endeavor? There was no film language. What kind of stories were you supposed to use this medium to tell? So for me, what's interesting is that these people, these pioneers are really rather like, serve in the same position that people who are at the cutting front of VR technology are at now because we're kind of at a tipping point and will be, I guess, over the next few years when everything will change. I suppose we've all been waiting for the advent of VR in homes across the world, and people will look at the two dimensional screen as this fossil.
Brian Talbot:
A relic of the past. Yeah.
Mark Oliver:
Really when I try to bring my imagination to bear and think of the very, very early days of cinema and the role that people like my grandfather would've played in its development, I find that fascinating. It's kind of like alchemy. The people that saw it in their mind's eye, they could go home and grind a lens at nighttime and show up to the studio and see what that did. You know all these kind of strange experiments with lighting and different film stocks and the kind of performances that you could bring to the screen. People suddenly realized, "Oh my God, it's not like the theater. We can really dial back all this physical language, and it just can become very small and intimate." So these are many factors that have led me to pursue this as research and also as a kind of story of one man's rise and fall and how that person's life could actually be a mirror of cinema history itself.
Randall Ryan:
I'm still waiting for my thousand shares of Sankyo Quadraphonic to pay off.
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Randall Ryan:
Do you think that's going to [inaudible 00:35:32] anytime soon? Hey, Mark, I got a question for you.
Mark Oliver:
Certainly.
Randall Ryan:
You've lived in three of the biggest actor cities. You've lived in London. You've lived in New York. You've lived in Vancouver. What made you come back to and settle in Vancouver?
Mark Oliver:
At a certain point I thought, "I suppose I really have to spend more time with my mother and father. They're getting older." And it was traumatic to be in New York City for reasons yet to be discovered.
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
There was no way you could live in the Manhattan of that period without maintaining a big brass front. I mean you just had to have a lot of nerve and be totally fearless.
Brian Talbot:
Boy, do I understand. I lived there in the late '80s and left in '90 for exactly the same reason.
Mark Oliver:
So I just realized, like, if I continue to be in this city, I am not going to be doing myself any favors because I just don't have the will to be as adept or a bullshitter as I once did.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah I didn't like who I was becoming, because of the city, right. It was changing me as a person and not necessarily in a good way.
Mark Oliver:
It's hard. You might have to make the occasional Faustian bargain with yourself, and I…
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
…didn't want to do, I didn’t want to do that particularly. And the city was changing. It wasn't the New York that I'd arrived to. So having said all that, it came as a great kind of moral defeat to have to leave Manhattan because you hear the kind of inverse of Frank Sinatra in your mind: If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere. So all I could hear was, "You didn't make it here so that you'll never make it anywhere.”(laughing)
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Mark Oliver:
That’s all, that kept playing out in my mind again and again…
Randall Ryan:
Sure. Ouch.
Mark Oliver:
…It was hard to come to terms with that. But, you know, now I look back and I can laugh about it all because it really... you know what did I expect of myself? I don't know. I was a different person then, and I have different needs now.
Randall Ryan:
Yep. Well, there's also that fame thing that we're all subject to. People think you've made it when you've worked on the big game. Right? Yet, the big game doesn't necessarily pay you more than that indie project, and it certainly doesn't pay you necessarily more than a long-term animation thing that maybe it's got an niche audience, but you keep coming back and you keep doing episodes, but somebody who's making a career doing the episodic stuff. So I think the New York thing also, like the LA thing, can have an element of that.
Brian Talbot:
Well, take your choice. Do you want to be a famous person, or do you want to be a long-time working actor?
Randall Ryan:
Right.
Brian Talbot:
Right.
There’s lots of things you can do to get famous,(laughing) and a lot of them aren't really good. Do you want that fame where, "Oh man, I was soldier
Mark Oliver:
No!
Brian Talbot:
…number 17 in this game?”
Mark Oliver:
Can I tell you can I say this? I got to get this off my chest right now. I wanted I moved to New York City because I wanted to be cool, and I stayed in New York because I wanted to be cool. I only want do cool things. If I did one thing that was not so groovy, then I would feel ashamed. It's easy for me to say, I suppose. I feel bad for some actor friends of mine who just go, "But I got to work, man. I'm working." You go, "But this thing that you're doing is, it’s heinous." If we had a really operational union, like a real actor's union, then the heads of those unions would be able to call producers onto the carpet and say, "Gentlemen, we've studied the script for the project you have in mind and frankly, we feel it is beneath the dignity of our membership.”(laughing) That would be a real-
Brian Talbot:
There goes most of the projects. There you go.
Randall Ryan:
Yeah, that's it. There go most of the projects.
Mark Oliver:
That's sort of what I feel. I mean, I guess I've had to cut corners here and there to somehow survive, but I really feel like those things can come back and haunt you. I look up to my heroes for setting an example to follow. There was going to be a future full of compromise in New York City, and that was a heartbreaker….
Brian Talbot:
Yeah.
Mark Oliver:
…Of course, now I laugh because I must have been a very, very naïve and extremely idealistic young man, too.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah you know there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing…
Mark Oliver
(Sigh)
Brian Talbot:
…wrong with being idealistic and naïve and you know trying to get what you want.
Mark Oliver:
Yeah.
Brian Talbot:
There’s nothing wrong with turning down the bargain.
Mark Oliver:
Oh, but it's so scary because like all the famous people I knew or the people who became really big stars were really just prepared to like completely sell out at the first…
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, do anything.
Mark Oliver:
... opportunity. Now some of them are still around, and they're sort of accorded this legendary status now. I thought, "Oh, no. That person's heart wasn't in the right place back then, and it's not in the right place now. It's galling. It is galling.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah.
MarkOliver:
If any of you belong to MUBI, the European streaming platform, you can watch this little film that I directed which talks about all of these things, or I'd like to think that it covers a few of them. It is Elvis: Strung Out. That's kind of an examination of celebrity culture.
But that was kind of a voiceover endeavor or wouldn't have come together had it not been from my experience doing ADR. Because I'd had this big file of Elvis dialogue talking about particular things, and I edited it down until I felt I kind of created a Haiku. Then I thought, "Well, this is deserving of its own video now." So I had to go out and try and find as much archival footage of Elvis in the same outfit…
Brian Talbot:
Sure.
Mark Oliver:
… for continuity's sake, and then keyed it in over the audio so it was like lip sync in reverse. But, I realized while I was doing this with my editor, he was saying, "But that doesn't really work, does it?" I go, "No, it does." Because I'd spent so much time trying to fit dialogue into an image on the screen, I thought, "Oh, actually, yeah. I guess I've been kind of training to do precisely this type of project for a very, very long time.”
Brian Talbot:
Fabulous.
Mark Oliver:
It's funny how even something like that came as a consequence of being a voice person. Who would've thunk it? Just an aside, an aside.
Brian Talbot:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
I think it's all about putting yourself in the right position and then just being open for the opportunity. What's the best piece of advice you can offer?
Mark Oliver:
I think you gave an extremely good one, and we'll circle back to that because it stayed in my mind. That is, if you wish to become part of this community of voice people, the first thing that you must do is to become a student of voices, full stop. You just have to be fascinated by that. People have stopped me and said, "Yeah, it's all right for you to say," or whatever, because they feel like I'd found a loophole.
Brian Talbot:
Like you didn't have to go through it…
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
…You didn't have to put in the hard work. Right yeah.
Mark Oliver:
It's like, well, you can make so much money, those union jobs down at the liquor store, you just got to know somebody or something like that.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Oliver:
I would have to say, I consider the community of voice acting, to be, it's a very, very pure pursuit. Everybody is very warm and welcoming to anybody else who enters that world. I think that people are so gifted. I'll go out on a limb and say I think it could, in many ways, be the purest form of acting there is in terms of being able to lift something off of a page and make it come alive, or at least that's what I will always try and do.
Randall Ryan:
Well, I will say that I completely agree with you that, at least in my experience, the difference between the voice acting community and any other discipline of acting, is just exactly what you said, warm, friendly, inviting, helpful, let's all work on this together, let me help you if I can, which is completely different than, I would even say, not just other forms of acting, but most other creative disciplines. There's always this sense of competition that pervades. My first tribe are musicians, and I love my musician tribe. It's still what I self-identify as and yet, the level of competition and backstabbing, and "I'm better" and nitpicking. That’s what the voice acting community seems, for whatever reason, kind of lack that, and that's a very positive thing.
Brian Talbot:
Yeah, it kind of transcends that. I'm going to go ahead and agree with you because, well, you said that my advice was some of the best advice you could give, so there we go.
Mark Oliver:
(Laughing)
Randall Ryan:
(Laughing)
Brian Talbot:
Hey, it's been great to share this time with you and Randall.
Randall Ryan:
BT.
Brian Talbot:
Mark Oliver.
Mark Oliver:
Hey, BT, it's been a pleasure.
Brian Talbot:
Thank you so much for spending time with us.
Mark Oliver:
Anytime.
Brian Talbot:
Until next time.
Mark Oliver:
Later.
Brian Talbot:
Good times with Mark Oliver. What an interesting and talented guy. We could have talked all night. But, hey, who's got that kind of time? (Laughing) Let’s Talk Voiceover is hosted by Randy Ryan, owner of HamsterBall Studios, delivering the world's best talent virtually anywhere, and me, Brian Talbot, actor and all around creative dude. Reach out to us anytime by sending an email to bt@letstalkvoiceover.com or go to our website at www.letstalkvoiceover.com. That's www.letstalkvoiceover.com. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, and, yeah, check us out on Facebook and Twitter, too. We might take a look. It'll be fun. It'll be a good time. Good times had by all. Thanks for listening to Let's Talk Voiceover. We'll talk again real soon.
