Putting the Words in Wreck-It Ralph’s Mouth

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently had the incredible opportunity to visit the Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank to meet the Wreck-It Ralph filmmakers and try my hand, or in this case, mouth, at some of the Disney magic-making process.

Basically, I learned the hard way why animation is done after the voice work — matching one’s dialogue to existing images isn’t as easy as it looks. It was especially difficult for me in that I was stubborn and opted to voice Ralph despite the repeated warnings from storyboard artist Raymond Persi, who also performs the voices for Zombie and Ralph’s martini-swilling, fairly jerky neighbor Gene, respectively. Raymond is one in a long line of Disney and Pixar animators that did such a good job on the “scratch” audio take that they got the actual acting gig. That’s gotta feel good.

Raymond, and our man at the controls, Gabe Guy, both made it quite clear that voicing the first speaker in a scene was really hard. I showed them they were right. I think we all learned a lesson. Still, everyone else was doing Vanellope von Schweetz, and they were good at it. I didn’t need that kind of pressure.

Instead, I rolled the dice and made John C. Reilly very comfortable in his job security. There are two videos of the moment: The first video shows what it looks like to make the recording, and the second is the finished project.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Wreck-It Whit:

Wreck-It Ralph opens Nov. 2, but you can get your fix now (see what I did there?) at the official Wreck-It Ralph website. You can also follow Wreck-It Ralph on Twitter and the Facebook that all the kids are doing.

Photo by Marshall Weinbaum, videos courtesy of Disney

I attended a blogger/press event as a guest of Disney. All opinions are my own.