Funny guy Arnett is definitely not a stranger to voice work. The former Arrested Development star voiced a vulture named Vlad in Horton Hears a Who! and Horst in Ratatouille. He's also part of the voice cast of Sit Down, Shut Up, a new animated TV series on Fox. At the LA press conference for Monsters vs Aliens, Arnett described the process and what it's like to bring an animated character to life.
Will Arnett Monsters vs Aliens Press Conference
How would you compare Monsters vs Aliens to Sit Down, Shut Up?Will Arnett: "They're similar in approach in that you're just in a booth by yourself. But Sit Down, Shut Up we had to crank out an episode each week, which involves usually doing a table read, that I was usually not involved in person. I would have to call in and I would be in my living room listening to a noisy conference room and just kind of interject with a line here and there. Then do the record and then do subsequent re-records, so we were under a much tougher timeline on Sit Down, Shut Up to deliver the episodes because it starts airing in April. Monsters, we had the luxury, or I certainly had the luxury, of a lot more time to kind of finesse my part. I don't know if that's evident in the final product. It might be embarrassingly not. At least I had the benefit of a couple of years. I bet the animators and the producers and the directors would be like, 'Hey, man. We didn't have any luxury. It was rough.'"
What was the best part of making this movie?
Will Arnett: "Good question. I would say probably being able to, when you're doing each take, to try to kind of top yourself, do something a little bit different as you're trying to discover who the character is, try to figure out what kind of makes him funny or what makes him tick. That for me was a lot of fun. Also, seeing everybody else's stuff and realizing that I had to raise my game."
Do you have to feel connected to the character? You don't resemble a missing link.
Will Arnett: "Thank God. Let me just start with that. Yeah, you do have to have a connection and, again, I think that one of the benefits of the process taking so long, for the actors anyway, or at least for me, was that you have a lot of time in between sessions to think about who the character is or where they're coming from or where they're going, so that when you start to…when they give you a certain amount of latitude to improvise or to bring your own ideas into it, they're coming from a real place that's driven by character, not just trying to do something that might seem funny or shocking or whatever. Any time that you work on anything, any kind of movie or TV show and live-action endeavor, of course the director is a very important part of the process because they're kind of your guide. In this, the director is very much your guide because you don't have the benefit of hearing the other actors and you can't feed off of that, so you have to put a tremendous amount of trust in the directors and their vision and what else is happening in the scene. That's the person that you bounce off of, really. So it is a real collaboration between the actors and the director, maybe more so than in any other format."
Did you pick up on the message that it's okay to be different?
Will Arnett: "Yeah, it's got a tremendous message. It kind of, right from the get-go, they realize that they have to embrace [that]. The world realizes that they have to embrace these people who are different. I think that that's a very positive thing that can't be reinforced enough. We live in a world now where we think that we're very progressive and advanced. It's only when we can break all that stuff down that we really can consider ourselves progressive. So I think it's a great message."
Is the process liberating or restrictive?
Will Arnett: "Well, I am guilty of using a lot of face work. Truthfully, it does take away a lot of, obviously, your physicality and you can't rely on that. So in that way it is, but it's a challenge because you have to convey the same sentiment just using your voice. Of course the animators are helping you out and they're drawing all this stuff. You go in, you get the script, you start to record when they're just early on, when they just have animatics. Then they have to animate to what you've done initially. It's a constant back and forth. They draw stuff, then you have to vocalize what they've done potentially. But they really kind of complement each other."
"It's a different challenge and it's a different skill set that you're using. You don't have as many freedoms but you also have the liberty of being able to interpret a line a certain way and then immediately do it totally differently. They don't have to do a big re-light or a big reset, or it doesn't have a dramatic effect on the way the thing goes. They just keep rolling a bunch of digital tape until they tell you to quit it."
