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Last Updated: Tuesday, 12 November 2013 07:32
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Written by Lupe Haas
Martin Short voices not one but three vastly different characters in Tim Burton’s FRANKENWEENIE. The triple threat bounces between voicing a menacing old man, a teenager, and a kindly father. The actor sits down with CineMovie to talk the art of voice over work and why Tim Burton is a genius.
FRANKENWEENIE is the second collaboration between the Saturday Night Live (SNL) alumni and director Tim Burton after having worked on Mars Attacks! in 1996. Best known for his Jiminy Glick character, the Canadian born actor bounces from playing the characters of Mr. Frankenstein, Mr. Burgemeister, and a Frankenstein-looking teen Nassor. He explains how he comes up with the voices.
CM: How did you come to be part of the project? Did Tim call you?
Martin: Yes, Tim called me.
CM: Did he want you to voice three characters from the start?
Martin: He always had this idea for three characters. He wanted me to play…I’m trying to think now if he wanted me to play or he was specific with Nassor or one of the kids. He wanted me to play one of the kids. I think it was Nassor, and always for Burgemeister, and the father.
CM: You’re reuniting after working with Tim Burton on Mars Attack! This being a stop-motion animation, did you get to interact much with him?
Martin: He was always there at the sessions either Skyping, but he was also present for three sessions when he was in L.A. At one point, he talked to us about flying out to London, but he never did.
CM: Now is it bizarre to take direction frm someone on screen during a recording session?
Martin: No, it’s not Skyping like with an open computer. This is at Disney, so you walk onto the studio stage and he’d be the size of a drive-in movie screen and the quality is so spectacular. So within a minute or two, you just forget that he’s being Skyped. It just feels like he’s there.
CM: Do you study the drawings to come up with the voice?
Martin: They send me the drawings in advance and then you get there , and there’s the drawing. It just kind of inspires you, but then you know, sometimes playing against type is funnier. So if it was a real macho guy, you play him a very effeminate way. That could be funnier than just playing him macho. Burgemeister had to be creepy and menacing, and odd but that can be a wide range of voices. So you just experiment. You keep trying to get it out there. ‘What about this? What about that voice?’
CM: You did that with Nassor who looks like a Frankenstein, but you chose not to do that obvious voice.
Martin: Tim’s there to guide you. You feel very safe because you can just throw out everything. If you’re working with someone who’s not like Tim Burton, you tend to be more cautious. ‘Oh, I better be careful what I suggest because this idiot might say that’s a good idea and I know it’s a bad idea.’ With Tim, I don’t worry.
CM: Charlie Tahan and Atticus Shaffer who voice the teens stated Tim stressed giving the characters a sort of realness? Did you get the same direction for Victor’s father, but more out there for the other two characters?
Martin: A little more out there, but in a strange way he still wants an element of reality. An element of three-dimension even though it’s strange. I think we know a lot of strange people in our lives whose agenda is not to be strange, they are just strange.
CM: What would you say is the one rule of voiceover work?
Martin: I don’t know if there is one rule. I don’t think there is one rule…a not for me. Maybe there should be.
CM: What is the best advice for someone who wants to get into voice over work?
Martin: I think you can’t go in with a set pre-conceived notion. I think that’s a mistake. You have to go in with an absolute belief that it’s going to be the luck of the draw to feel what they are going for too. It might also be a voice that they don’t want, and you want then it means you shouldn’t do it.
CM: You have a lot of experience creating alter egos, what is the best advice when creating a character?
Martin: I think you have to have an element of sincerity. Like if you’re doing a character to be comedic, like Franck in Father of the Bride, you can’t try to be funny. If you try to be funny, it won’t be funny. You just have to be sincere in his eccentricity and then it will be funny. That brings the audience in. If it’s too ‘I’m trying to be funny, funny, funny,’ then it kind of pushes the audience away. You’re doing all their work for them.
CM: What is it about Tim Burton that everyone wants to work with him?
Martin: He’s a genius. He’s an artist. He’s an artist!
CM: Now for the most important question. Can you still do the dance from The Three Amigos movie?
Martin: Of course.
You had to be there. He actually motions the three signature moves while sitting on the couch in his hotel room. Martin Short hasn’t lost his touch. Watch his triple duty voice over work in FRANKENWEENIE, now playing in movie theaters.
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