A THOUSAND VOICES
-JEN TAGASA
-ED RAMOS

It’s not just about doing the voices anymore. For voice talents executives Pocholo Gonzales and Brian Ligsay, it is sustaining a craft that has been around before television, and nurturing future voices to be heard.

Mel Blanc was a god, and long after to exist, Blanc’s voice will live on-in Bugs Bunny, in Daffy Duck, in Elmer Fudd, and every other Looney creature in that animation of our youth. Brian Ligsay, marketing director and COO, and Pocholo Gonzales, managing director and CEO of Creativoices Productions, the country’s first voice production, school and management for voice over talents, might just replicate that legacy.

“I’ve done thousands of voice overs,” says Gonzales, who has over ten years of experience as a radio talent. And it all started when then five-year old Gonzales would listen to radio dramas like Gabi ng Lagim, which he says fueled his imagination and sparked in him the idea of capturing attention with a mere shift in one’s vocal characteristic. In high school, Gonzales recalls, he would mimic his teacher’s voices, which quickly got him the class clown status. In college, unfortunately, Gonzales didn’t make it to Mass Communications because the quota had already been filled. So, he had to settle for Creative Writing, where literary greats like Nick Joaquin and NVM Gonzales were teachers. Ironically, the written word wasn’t exactly one of his strengths.

“Nakita mo ‘yung importansya… ‘yung hirap. Sulat ka ng sulat. Eh, wala namang buhay ‘yun! Gusto kong magsalita.”

Gonzales came up with a sound solution – shift courses. He found his salvation in Speech Communication, were he reveled in exercises that would be his defining moments, particularly in extemporaneous speech. Gonzales recounts he had to make up descriptions about things that were available in class, off the top of his head – perhaps pens, or plants or even the desk. Even the oral exams whereby students who’d fallen prey to the dastardly but saving phrase of the “speechless,” the annoying “uhmmm,” got point deductions whenever it was uttered during a speech in class. Gonzales, being the cunning speaker that he is, made use of dramatic pauses and rueful silences when his mind would blank out during a speech, instead of polluting the air with the wicked, “uhmmm.”

Once freed from the confines of the university, Gonzales took to auditioning for a slot on the radio show anchored by Joey Galvez and May Catherine Valle, called, Radyo-Radyo, where some 2,000 people auditioned. And DZMM picked him. He was 17 at the time. To date Gonzales has done voice imitations of FPJ, Micheal V., Mike Enriquez, Marc Logan, and even Inday Garutay.

Meanwhile, Ligsay has over 12 years of experience as professional voice-actor and host for various events. Ligsay’s résumé includes animation features like Zoids (Cartoon Network), games like Terra Wars, TV adverts like Frontier Call for Globe Japan, numerous telenovelas for ABS-CBN and a barrage of other voice over work. Both have recently finished voice acting for the first Pinoy animated film called Libingan from Tuldok Animation Studios.

While the voices from your childhood barely had any semblance of training and some type of rigid discipline when it came to maintaining that modulated voice on-air (in fact, some veterans swear by the smoking and drinking and nightly carousing as effective voice enhancers) the new talents these days prefer to preserve their main source of livelihood by not drinking (too much), and not partying (too much). Ligsay does mention that drinking ginger tea evidently constricts one’s vocal cords, so they stay away from that.

Gonzales informs us that a voice actor (particularly for radio dramas and dubbed telenovelas) must be able to read faster, with the mind working faster than the mouth. He says, “So that when you speak, the lines, you already know how to feel it, you’re already that character. Plus, you should read the script before dubbing so you already know where the story is going.”

If you’re seriously thinking about taking on another career, or making a complete change of how you make money, these professionals emphasize that a voice talent must not be conscious of the environment. If one is too aware of one’s environment the likelihood of acting out a character with supreme confidence, in a booth with people watching and listening, is going to be nil. “You can’t be shy,” Gonzales and Ligsay say. Gonzales effectively demonstrates this all throughout the conversation by going into different voices and giving us samples of old radio drama acting technique, also known as “overacting.” Though essentially, what comes off as overacting in normal performance platforms (like movies or TV), is necessary for radio dramas because sometimes there are drastic shits in emotions. Gonzales masterfully demonstrates this by voicing the character of a young man who has just won a basketball game with a booming, enthusiastic voice. Suddenly he finds out that his father just died, and Gonzales quickly shifts his voice to that of lament, sobbing and wailing. It’s just something else.

But duo isn’t just around to dispense little known tricks of the trade, and share there expertise on the art. There is a greater cause to be pushed, for the greater good. Gonzales, who has studied voice acting in the USA, remarks that while there is a wealth of good animation in the country, the voices behind them are lifeless and sometimes are lacking in technique, or character. This is at CreatiVoices for those aspiring to become voice actors, dubbers or do voice over work. Apart form training future talents, Gonzales and Ligsay concern themselves with professionalizing an industry that has long suffered shady contracts and substandard fees. Both reveal how some talents, out of need to get the job, blindly sign a blank contract. A lot don’t even get their talent fees, or sometimes have to endure delayed payments. Gonzales adds he hasn’t even gotten his fee for a TV advert he did several months back. It is an age-old practice that CreatiVoices is trying to deal with by looking out for their artists.

With a pool of highly trained voice talents, and a goal to make the industry better, voice acting, or dubbing will hopefully no longer be just heard in the background. In time, Gonzales and Ligsay hope to create a heritage of an exceptional body work (including archiving various voice recordings), and help build an industry that respects its talents.