“Have Gun-Will Travel” was a radio drama that actually started as a TV series first. There were two separate casts, and many people will be quick to tell you which Paladin is their one-and-only. But what got me thinking was the very different types of performances that are needed for these different mediums and, how a shift in the way TV is filmed today, has made modern television acting more like being an audio drama actor.
The key to voice acting is imagination. Most of the TV episodes of “Have Gun-Will Travel” were written for television, then edited and used for the radio cast. When the TV show Paladin pulls out a gun, rides off on a horse, or faces down a bad guy, the scene is recreated as realistically as that era could afford for the small screen. But when the radio Paladin performed those same scenes, he had to imagine the gun. The horse was the sound FX guy, and the bad guy was just another actor on mic, his nose down in his own script. So to be a voice actor is to create the world of the story around you in your mind without costumes, props, or any sets. And that is a skill not everyone can master.
In today’s television world, TV (or streaming) show actors find themselves in a hybrid situation of both original television production, and the radio dramas of the past/audio dramas of today. As computer graphics have improved, there is an extensive amount of green screen sets being utilized in even the most ordinary seeming scenes. Purely a budgeting choice. I spent over seven years working as a background actor (extra) on countless television series. It’s not just the sci-fi, superhero, or supernatural series who use green screen. For example, I worked “Scandal.” A very real world drama. In one scene I worked, the President of the United States had to get on Marine One, the official helicopter of the President, on the White House lawn. Well, sorry to disillusion you, but that was shot in a park in Los Angeles. There was a giant green screen tarp stretched across the tree line, and a wooden staircase, also green screen, for the actor to climb up as if it were the steps leading up to the helicopter. In the legal drama, “All Rise,” all of the exterior sets for entering the courthouse were “blue screen” (same idea, different color) including the ground. No pillars, no doors, no marble flooring. Even the bench the actors sat on was just a wooden block painted blue.
So you can see, that modern actors have to use a lot of their imagination to really put themselves in the scenes. But it goes further than the settings or surroundings. What is called the “three-camera sitcom” is your traditional “live before a studio audience” show. Desi and Lucy created this method which in many ways emulates a stage play performance. Today, that style has fallen out of vogue, so more of a cinematic “single camera” style is used. It’s called “single cam” but there are often more than one camera filming the scene. What that term really means is the show doesn’t film in story order, there is no audience, and the scene will be done repeatedly with a variety of “set ups” or camera angles. The real kicker of this style, is an actor in a scene, especially in a tight close up, won’t have any of the other cast present when filming. They will be saying their lines alone. They make eye contact with an object on set that usually has a neon taped “X” to represent the eye line of the other actor. If they’re lucky, a low level assistant will read the other character’s lines to them off camera, somewhere in the dark. Talk about needing your imagination!
To me, this is the equivalent of today’s remote-recording voice actors who don’t record “live” with the cast online. These VAs are using their imaginations to hear the other characters in their scene as they read along in the script, envision the setting they’re in, and react as if they’re hearing the action/sounds around them. It can be a challenge to bring out a truly dramatic performance alone in your booth. As well as creating comedic energy with no audience to react to your jokes. We’re all just pretending, using our imaginations so the audience will believe it is real.
