Finding their voice: Two seniors hired as voice actors

Seniors Jordan Pollard and Cameron Underwood have been hired for a voice­ acting job from California.

Pollard and Underwood are working with a studio called Moonshine Animations, run by Moon Kim. Most of the animations involve stop motion.

Pollard and Underwood invest their time in a YouTube channel, called DUBious By Nature, that showcases their abilities.

“It is pretty exciting, the prospect that we get to do [voice acting] somewhat professionally,” Underwood said.

Pollard and Underwood have been actively pursuing theater and acting since before they began taking classes at Northwood.

“I’ve always loved acting,” Underwood said. “I’ve been acting since sixth grade, maybe fifth grade, and I’ve done acting through all this time I’ve been in this wonderful establishment [Northwood.]”

Both Pollard and Underwood began voice acting during their sophomore year. Voice actors provide voice-­overs for animated characters in various forms of media.

Pollard and Underwood began voice acting as a fun activity that was inspired by anime.

“I’ve been into anime since sixth grade,” Pollard said. “It has a bad rap, but it’s a really good art form. As I got into the art of anime and the story line, the acting just followed, and it’s cool to be able to give life to a character like that.”

Pollard first introduced Underwood to the activity.

“I kind of stumbled into it,” Underwood said. “It was never really a planned thing, just something we did for fun on a Saturday, but it turns out that we’re pretty good at it.”

Voice acting and typical acting are very similar, but in voice acting, actors are unable to show emotion through body movement. When voice acting, all of their emotion is expressed through their voice.

“It has a lot of the same principles as acting, but you get to focus solely on the vocal part of it,” Underwood said.

Even though voice acting and stage acting are different, Pollard still enjoys both activities.

“I love stage acting,” Pollard said. “I’ve been in a lot of the plays and musicals…I love acting in general, but I really like voice acting…. With voice acting, you really have to over ­exaggerate everything you do, which I didn’t really know when I started. If you speak in a normal voice, it sounds flat. It’s hard not to make it fun.”

Underwood shared his experiences with voice acting and the process.

“The difference between voice acting and acting on stage is that you do the same line over and over again, and you can listen back to the recording,” Underwood said. “I’ll do a line, and I’ll get so frustrated because I can’t do it right. And then when it finally comes out, and it is the exact way I want it to sound, it is just this overwhelming feeling of achievement. Just like, yes, I did it, it’s great. That’s probably the best part.”

Both Pollard and Underwood plan to be involved in theater in the future but do not plan to pursue voice acting as a career. Pollard plans to be involved in art and to be close to the voice acting field by going into animation in college.

Pollard does not think that voice acting is noticed as much as it should be.

“I think that voice acting should get more recognition in the theater community as a whole, because it’s one of those jobs that you don’t hear about anyone ever doing, but clearly someone is doing it,” Pollard said. “I feel like theater classes, theater programs and productions should have more opportunities for people to learn about voice acting and just talk about it.”

– By Natalie Fragnito