Jim on Camera

Jim Cutler's voice must be familiar to anyone who listens to Leo Laporte's network, but also recalls Media Network in the 1990's. Jim did all the fun-parody trailers on the show. There was also the time when our recording session with him was broadcast on the Astra satellite without us knowing - until a listener sent us a CD of the session a couple of months later.

A good word for Jim

Good voice acting is actually very difficult. There are few with the natural "pipes" that don't sound forced. I was really fortunate to work with Jim Cutler back in my days presenting Media Network for Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Jim is still very active on stations around the world and definitely in the same league as the other voice actors shown below.

Why? Because he's able to read a text in about 50 different ways. In fact that makes him better than many of the movie trailer guys, who sound great for about a minute, but they can't narrate a documentary because everything they do is "forte", there's little or no dynamic in their voices. Jim, on the other hand, makes even your own driving licence sound interesting!

Which reminds me, I must montage a great interview I did with Jim back in 2005 about his love of astronomy.

Five VoiceOver Artists and a Limo

This clip is old, made originally for the 26th Annual Hollywood Reporter Key Awards. Ssomeone appears to have cleaned up the audio on the version out on Youtube. I still don't understand why the company that made it for the Hollywood Reporter Awards ceremony doesn't put a "studio quality" version of it on line. It proves that voices you hear on the radio never look like the way you imagined.

The five are Don LaFontaine, John Leader, Nick Tate, Mark Elliot, and Al Chalk. Actually, there are 6 if you count Hal Douglas who "phones in" to the sketch.