VOICES | Interview with Carl Armstrong.

In 2005, Dose had me profile several voice actors for a series called “behind the voices”. Most of my work went to waste because the profiles were cut down more than 90%.  For the purposes of this web series, I am including the longer interview content in full.

Who’s behind the voices?

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! No, wait, do. Much like the Great and Powerful OZ, the voiceover people at some of Canada’s biggest networks play a major role in how those stations are perceived, and I’m here to give you the skinny on who they are, what they do, and what they look like. They’re the people you’ve probably heard, even if you’ve never heard of them. And you get to see them here first. Here: Carl Armstrong, late 30s. Best known for the “Sitting on the crapper song”.

Jen Selk for Dose: Did you always want to do voices?

Carl Armstrong, voice actor.

Carl Armstrong: Sort of.

When I was a kid growing up in Ottawa, my friend Dave Campbell and I would sit around making each other laugh with our lousy imitations of villains from action movies like Sudden Impact (the character Mick, as played by Paul Drake), and Dirty Harry (Andy Robinson as the Scorpio killer).

I was always subconsciously infatuated with how creepy someone could sound, not by what they said, by how they said their words, how they used texture in their voice to convey character.

I remember how much so many things came alive for me, like sitting in a darkened theatre as a young kid watching Jaws for the first time. I was blown away by emotions I had never experienced before. From then on, I knew who Robert Shaw (Quint), Richard Dreyfus (Hooper), and Roy Scheider (Chief Brody) were. And how John Williams did the score, and Spielberg directed … all of it.

Later, when I started to write music and used samplers, I started making little one minute audio stories to go on the beginnings of mix tapes for road trips with my buddies. I’d sample the voice-over off VHS trailers like Terminator 2, where the voice said, “You could own the Terminator 2: Judgement Day jacket. Until now, only cast and crew could wear one!” I just loved how something so mundane could be so cool just because of the voice.

So you were sort of always on your way here?

I just became really interested into voice-over in the same way as I got interested in music and sound. I’ve always been fascinated but I fell into doing voice-overs myself out of necessity. I would need a weird character voice for a spot I was working on, so I’d end up doing it myself.

Tell me about working at MuchMusic.

When I first started at MuchMusic, my job was to write the little bumpers that played on late night CityTV between the movies. I then had to get Mark Dailey to record them. Mark has been the official voice of CityTV for as long as I’ve listened to the channel, and working with him, such a naturally gifted voice-over talent, taught me a lot about inflection, enunciation, all of it. I’d learn to write for him, or write words, that quite often didn’t really make any sense, but sounded cool coming out of his mouth! Over three years of recording him every day I guess I just started to absorb a sense of pacing and flow.

Since I’d always loved voice-over people, I just loved taking what I could from him. And I’ve always loved improv… doing stupid things on camera. Sometimes I just play, and that ends up being my favourite stuff.

Sometimes I’d go out with one of the other producers with a 16mm camera, a leftover roll of film, and just start improvising on roughly-laid-out scripts, stupid stuff, but stuff that made us laugh. These little shorts would go to air as IDs on Much, and before long, other producers would ask me to do voice-overs for parts of their spots, which later led to full spots, and then I just fell into doing voice-overs as well as everything else that I do here.

How different is doing a voice-over from regular talking?

Completely. I kind of like character voices. I’m more that kind of reader. I like playing with voice texture and trying to screw it up a bit. Making something sound good for air is definitely different than just talking. How do I make 30 seconds of copy sound interesting and engaging and also get it’s message across? That’s stuff I picked up coaching other people. By coaching them you learn what works and what doesn’t work. You don’t realize how simple things that you take for granted when you read, really matter. People need to have a sense of how to do a read.

Is it easy at this point?

Doing long lists of copy is still hard for me. I think I’m so used to doing reads that are :15 to :60 long that doing narration is still work for me. I’d like to do more of that and get better at that.

I’m always listening to people, looking for what I like and don’t like. It’s exactly like being an actor. I’m constantly taking courses. I love learning about how to do things so I can do more things. Sound design, music, animation, acting courses, cinematography courses … I take courses in anything. I feel I have so many things to get better at, but am enjoying all the opportunities I’ve been given.

Always learning? That sounds like fun.

It’s fun, but it can also be a problem sometimes, because you try to do too much. Try to do everything. So much of television – the teams are so big. You get individuality by doing something yourself. I find that very satisfying, but the voice work – it’s sort of a secondary off shoot of my everyday job.

I still really enjoy working with other voice-over talent. I learn so much from listening to how different people interpret the same dialogue. To me, as a commercial producer, voice-over is like  music and sound design, it’s just another very important part of the package that sucks you into the spot.

Any funny stories?

A couple of years ago, it was the first time that I did a live voice-over for the MuchMusic Video Awards. Tamara Plener, the female voice of the station and myself were both wearing black, both had ear pieces in, and were standing by the microphones that were set up in the party tent. Every time we did our “coming up next” bumpers, I swear, people would come up and tap on our shoulders, while we were live, and ask us where the washrooms were, where they could get more wine, or if we could order them a cab! While we were doing live voice-overs. I guess they thought we were security because we were wearing black and were standing near the client entrance tunnel. But that was a pretty crazy experience.

Do you think people appreciate what you do?

People don’t place enough emphasis on how important a voice is. You can write great copy, but if the voice isn’t right, it won’t work. People at home won’t know why exactly, but they’ll feel something is wrong. Voice-overs are a huge part of production quality.

Any favourite voices? Heroes?

I think my favourite part of going to movies is to see the trailers before hand and listen to all my favourite “Big Movie Trailer” guys like Hal Douglas, Percy Rodriguez, Don Lafontaine. It’s like like listening to a great musician perform, hearing those guys, at least to me it is.

A version of this piece appeared in Dose on August 4, 2005. See clipping below. More from this series:

Behind the voices: Tony Daniels.

Behind the voices: Tamara Plener.

Behind the voices: Don Berns.

Behind the voices: Lee Marshall.

Published in Dose, August 4, 2005.