London UK based comedian, voiceover artist, impressionist and highly versatile voice actor Sean Ruttledge, well known as the man of over 9000 voices, providing character development services and characters voices for animations, video games and movies
Before I ever did any form of voice-over work professionally I was doing impressions of famous people, I've always been a parrot, mimicking interesting sounds I heard daily and at least one of my kids is exactly the same
One of my VO pals was recently boasting about her versatility and she reeled off every single area of the Voice-acting / Narration / Voiceover canon she had worked in, claiming quite bullishly that it represented EVERY niche of commercial voice work
Sadly I had to disappoint her, she'd never done any Voice-Match work! this is where you become a voice double for celebrity voices that are commercially in demand but for one reason or another won't work for the product / money / principle of what's being offered, sometimes they are deceased and advertisers want their great voices to live on
Here's my latest reel showcasing a few of the famous voices I regularly voice match including Sean Bean, a man who not only shares my first name but my home town, Richard Burton & Patrick Allen, two of the greatest British voices ever who are now sadly long departed, Movie trailer legend Don Lafontaine and finally the always in demand "Voice of God" that is Morgan Freeman
I regularly get requests to impersonate celebrity voices in my home VO studio, if you've got a required get in touch, I'll see what I can do for you! www.seanie.com
Many of you who know me as an actor, comedian and voice-over artist, will know that I'm not usually massively boastful or big into self promotion, it's not like I go around calling myself an "Award winning voiceover artist" even though I won the Voices Pro Radio Drama Competition back in 2013
HOWEVER...
When I learned I'd been double nominated for Hollywood's Golden Trailer Awards I think I was so excited I swore! then I posted repeatedly about it all over various social media outlets, much to the annoyance of many of my online "friends"
Don LaFontaine Award for Best Voice Over
Best Voice-Over for a TV Spot
Let me apologise in advance for further mentioning this accolade here, as an artist you experience many highs and usually an equal amount of lows, many voice actors and commercial voiceover artists I know in London, and for that matter most actors and comedians I've met on the UK comedy circuit often live a "hand to mouth" existence, humbly chasing a vocation that they love above any kind of lucrative material aggrandisement
So why shouldn't you capitalise on your high points?
Well, you should, I've been hungry and impoverished chasing voice acting fame in the past, I've had hundreds of audition flops and "Thanks, we'll be in touch" failures too, so I'm jolly well going to shout about this high point! here's the story ....
I was lucky enough to be chosen from 50 odd auditionees to voice a number of trailers for the movie Mortdecai, the chaps who chose me were from Burbank California, a super cool outfit called Tiny Hero who make kick ass promos and trailers for the TV & Movie industry
In actual fact they auditioned and re-auditioned me so many times that at first I thought it was a practical joke, it turns out they're just perfectionists, I love perfectionists, I'm a bit of a perfectionist myself, but perfectionists can wear you down with their constant "do it agains"and their unceasing "say it this ways" and "try it that ways" bless 'em!
Most professional voice-over talent will know what I mean here, you often feel that your first read "nailed it" and each subsequent read gets gradually less and less awesome as your confidence and patience wane, but as a professional you continue on and on and on as directed, you may then start to feel inadequate and can doubt your own talent, I've often left lengthy VO sessions with perfectionist producers feeling drained and incompetent
But then the trailer comes out, you see the perfection in it, you understand why the auditions and recording sessions were so long and why so many re-runs and pick ups were needed, even though you suspect the takes they finally used were the first ones you ever recorded, the trailer is perfect!
The icing on the cake is when you later learn that this awesome work you all achieved together has been nominated for prestige industry accolades!
My great comedy hero Charles Chaplin was also a perfectionist, his feature films from the 1930's 40' & 50's would often take 2 years to shoot with some scenes being shot hundreds of times until he was finally happy, he also wrote the score, starred in, directed, and distributed his own movies via his company United Artists in order to have full creative control of his masterpieces, that must have been frustrating as hell for most of his coworkers but the end result was always perfection
The Golden Trailers are kind of like the Oscars for the Movie Marketing Industry, winning film & TV Promos and trailers are chosen by a panel of industry expert judges
The two I was nominated for were "Best Voice Over for a TV Spot" and the prestigious "Don LaFontaine Award for Best Voice Over" this is the one I'm most happy about
Don LaFontaine was another hero of mine, the original "Movie Trailer Guy" Voice, throughout the 80's 90's and noughties DLF as he was known voiced some 5000 movie trailers as the "voice of God" he passed away in 2008 yet his legend lives on, many movie trailer voice artists still imitate his deep amazing voice, its fair to say he created the archetypal trailer voice, he wrote the immortal line "In a world" and like Chaplin his life's work will transcend his mortality living on for many years after his earthly demise, as a voice-double I've been hired for a few voiceover gigs doing DLF style trailer impressions including one for Newsday on the BBC World Service that has a global audience of hundreds of millions of listeners
The great thing about my trailer voiceover in the Mortdecai promos though, is that it's not your typical archetypal North American movie trailer voice, it's in fact a character voice, based on a quintessentially British "Jeeves the butler" type character, to draw another Charlie Chaplin parallel, its a rare treat for a "Limey" to be making waves in Hollywoodland!
I worked long and hard in partnership with the wonderful folks at Tiny Hero on this, they truly are perfectionists and I'm glad we've achieved a movie trailer masterpiece that breaks the mould and the cliches of the genre, winning the DLF award for a non-DLF style movie trailer voice-over would be a real coup, but one of the nominees is a female and we've all seen the film "In A World" haven't we!
Dappergate - The mobbing and cyber-bullying of an overnight sensation by a gang of jealous comedians
The london comedy circuit, a friendly and supportive group of comedy performers all struggling to chase their dream and make it big in the world of comedy, how lovely! we need each other don't we? I know stand-up is a solitary profession but even so, if we are to progress in our field we need to remain likeable to our audiences, we need to remain bookable by promoters and desirable to agents and casting people
We want to succeed don't we? and we are happy to help our fellow performers who are on the same journey to succeed, aren't we? there are hundreds of us all chasing this dream and most of us will probably give in long before we achieve it
Many comics will spend 10 years or more performing for free or the occasional nominal fee that may just about cover their expenses, they will throw thousands of pounds into loss making Edinburgh shows in the hope of reviews and recognition, getting solvent or even famous in the world of comedy can be a lengthy and expensive task, most of Britain's wealthiest comedians languished in debt and poverty for years before they could break even, the success they eventually achieved was hard won
So when a relatively unknown comedian comes along, seemingly bypasses the pub basement open mic slog and gets money, recognition and fame in what seems like the blink of an eye we are all really inspired and happy for him, aren't we?
Who is DapperLaughs?
Well in the case of Daniel O'Reilly a.k.a DapperLaughs it would seem many are vexed, angered, outraged even, so who is DapperLaughs and how did he instantly rise to this meteoric fame?
I've known Daniel O'Reilly about 3 years since he first appeared on the London comedy scene, he started an open mic night in a railway arch in Clapham and imediately upset a clique of comedy pontificators that lurk online all day in the Facebook "Comedy Collective" his crime? he was advertising his gig as £5 for everyone, acts and audience alike, he was berated, told that "pay to play is evil" and called some very nasty names
Seeing the poor newbie getting a good online kicking from this open mic lynch mob I couldn't resist going to his inaugural comedy night, it wasn't perfect, trains rumbled overhead every few minutes and the stage lighting wasn't right but as far as open mic gigs go it was a relatively successful one, acts showed up, punters showed up, many acts were funny, I didn't want to perform but I paid a fiver for young Ben Adams to do a turn as he said he had no money
One thing that struck me about Daniel who MC'd that night was his stage presence, you could tell he wasn't a newbie performer, he had a great deal of charisma, he's a handsome young lad with a likeable cheeky chappie demeanour, one well known comedy promoter would no doubt describe this as "star quality"
Chatting to him afterwards he was apologetic about blundering onto the scene in a pay-to-play scandal, he vowed to put this right and talked of other gigs he had planned, it was clear that this young fellow was a go getter, an enthusiastic grafter who just wanted to put on some really good comedy shows, he runs a property business by day and clearly wasn't doing this for the extra money, he waived the £5 pay to play fee a week later
Subsequently he went on to form "Brand Spanking Comedy" a brand which has put on some of the best attended open mic gigs in Britain, I've regularly seen over 100 punters squeeze into his weekly open mic gig at the Jam Tree in Clapham, he put on "Fight For The Funny" at the iconic Clapham Grand night club and sold out, a capacity audience of around 400 paying punters, his new media marketing skills were behind this, Twitter, Facebook, websites, meetup, Wowcher etc all played a part
In the interests of full disclosure I'd like to mention at this stage that I have at some point been paid to MC his Clapham gig, aside from this I have no vested financial interests in any of his ventures and I've only seen him once very briefly in the past 12 months
Just over a year ago I sat down with Daniel to "write" some comedy in a bar in Clapham old town, we ended up mainly drinking and discussing his plans for the DapperLaughs character, we agreed that for this kind of Jack the lad, Lothario character to work the comedy would have to be highly self deprecating and the joke would always have to be on him, I advised Dapper Laughs at the time that he'd do much better with this character comedy on the internet rather than slogging it around the open mic stand-up scene, Vine wasn't invented at that point but it was agreed that with his skill set, video sharing sites like Youtube would get him much bigger audiences and a faster route to fame
Fast forward to the present day, the DapperLaughs character blew up on Vine, a micro video blogging service where you upload looping videos that are just six seconds long, he has well over 300,000 followers on Vine, some 800,000 fans on his Facebook page and many more hundreds of thousands on other new media platforms, in total he's heading towards 1.5 million new media subscribers, despite the shrill hectoring voices screaming MISOGYNY! DapperLaughs fan base are predominantly young, fun loving and female
On the strength of his Vine fame alone he has managed to sell out a UK wide comedy tour in comedy venues such as Komedia Brighton, over 7000 tickets sold in less than an hour, even big name, well established, professional comedians sometimes struggle to do this, on top of this he has worked with celebrities and been offered TV presenting gigs, he's produced a single using his Vine catchphrases "Proper Moist" and "She knows" which in just a few days has made the top 5 of the iTunes singles chart gaining national radio airplay, a phenomenal rise to fame, engineered and driven by his hard work, ambition and self marketing prowess, he now has an agent and is selling merchandise with his trademark #ProperMoist logo on it
Jealous Comedians
A couple of weeks ago I learned about a Vine war that was developing between DapperLaughs and another comedian, I smiled at first as the other comic is fairly well established, has done bits of TV presenting and is well known as a serial shagger of women, despite his competence as a comic and TV presenter though his Vine following of just over 3000 is just above one percent of DapperLaughs fan base, I didn't think he was really mad when he started making Vines accusing DapperLaughs of being "Racist, Sexist & Homophobic" the cynical marketer in me saw this as the usual internet drama engineered to raise his own views and followers, this Vine war was direct and personal, it didn't really make him look too good and I believe he actually lost followers as a result
In the past week a whole host of other "comedians" have ganged up and virulently hated on DapperLaughs, the hate has grown from silly claims that the DapperLaughs comedy character is really the true personality of Daniel O'Reilly into accusations of "shit comedy" and have spiralled through calling him names into rabid Internet hate mobs jealously wishing he would die a horrible death
"He needs to die" a credible death threat?
So who are these hateful "comedians" and why would they wish death on an overnight success story
One of them seems to be a young "student comic" called Joe Wells, I seem to recall encountering his online wrath before in the tired old "women in comedy" debate, (see a few posts below) he likes to position himself as a "Feminist" and he gave me a ticking off followed by much abusive name calling when I used the term FEMINAZIS which for me is an important denominator between decent, moderate feminists and the extremist, radical, man-hating kind
Joe is one of the "Right-on" members of the comedy police, always vocal about what kind of comedy is acceptable and what kind is "shit" what kinds of topics are acceptable in comedy and what subjects are off limits, we've met most of these people before, self appointed nobodies, bigoted politickers, trying to oppress every viewpoint that doesn't fit their own world view with abusive name calling, slandering other acts with terms like "racist, sexist and misogynist" when they're clearly holding a mirror up to it
Social justice campaigners, hero posters who constantly tweet banal and condescendingly self evident right-on slogans that tell us "Racism is bad" "Women need to be respected" etc etc ad nauseum
Caring people with a moral compass and vigilant social conscience right? WRONG !
Joe Wells "Genuinely hopes he dies"
Joe Wells, internet white knight, right-on chief of the comedy police, defender of the feminists "genuinely hopes he dies" but not only does he wish successful fellow comic DapperLaughs death, he wishes it "in the most painful and degrading way possible" what kind of hateful spite is behind that?
This extreme bitterness has to spring from the lack of similar success in their own flagging comedy careers
What really saddens me is the jealousy, jealousy is fuelling this virulent hate, this mob of cyber bullies has now gone way beyond the pale, this clique of comedy thugs has overstepped the mark, we live in a country where 2 people were jailed last week for tweeting "fuck off and die" to a feminist who was pretending she couldn't see the matriarchal female monarch we've had since 1953 on the front of every unit of our currency, whilst I think that in itself is an injustice these jealous, less successful comics ganging up on, bullying and wishing death to a fellow comedian is utterly vile
In another Facebook thread a mob of vexed comedians were campaigning to get Chortle's Steve Bennett to "review" DapperLaughs current UK tour, many comics would argue this is a fate worse than death threats, the hatred in that thread was so tangible it rubbed off on Bennett who was wrongly accused of writing horrible reviews of comedians and later removing them at the behest of advertisers
Joe Wells runs a gig that had four people click attending on the most recent event, half of those four people were Joe Wells and his girlfriend, is it any wonder he is outraged to the point of wishing a horrible death upon a comic he can't fathom could sell out a major comedy club in a few minutes
The politicking, pretending they don't understand what a comedy character is and constant "sexist, racist, misogynist" name calling are bad enough, but cyber bullying and mobbing are an extremely malicious attack on a fellow comedian for no reasons other than the fact that he is far more successful than you and he has achieved his large following using methods that are unorthodox to you
Sasha Baron Cohen does character comedy, he plays an anti-semite, a sexist, misogynist, it doesn't mean that he himself holds those values and even the least comedy savvy idiot knows this, there is no difference between him and Daniel O'Reilly, There's no difference between comedy Character Lee Nelson and comedy character DapperLaughs, shut up you vile jealous excuses for comedians and focus on yourself being the main reason for your lack of similar success
Joe Wells Havant Comedy Club - 4 attending
Daniel O'Reilly and DapperLaughs, rise above the death threats, the mobbing and the hate. I'm genuinely proud of all you have achieved in the past three years, as a promoter you have worked hard and provided quality stage time to hundreds of grateful comedians, as a comedian you have showed the mainstream circuit there are other ways to make it big in comedy and I salute you for this, long may your star continue to rise
If you'd like to help @DapperLaughs get his single to number 1 click here, you don't even have to like his musical prowess, it's just 79p to show a finger to these haters
Marc Burrows Cyber Bully Tag Team With Jayde Adams, he's doing "research" so he can write in The Guardian
The mob of cyber bullies continue their ongoing hate campaign via an abusive twitter account @CrapperLaughs, their jealousy is quite pitiful to witness
Well it's more of a SODcast really, a satirical take on the hot topics and political bickerings that matter most to the puppeteers and the players on the London stand-up comedy scene
What? a SODCAST?
Yes, it's just like a PODcast, well actually it's lampooning all the proper PODcasts, but it's like them, except it doesn't take itself too seriously
Why a podcast you sod?
Well, bizarrely enough, podcasts seem to have been proliferating in the past year or so amongst comedians on the London open-mic scene
Really? surely they're soooo 2006?
Another Comedy Podcast
Yeah I know right! Looking at my Jellycast account stats, I set it up in 2007 when Ricky Gervais was pioneering the medium, SIX YEARS AGO! in fact I was such an early adopter I managed to get the Jellycast user name SEAN
So podcasting is something you tried 6 years ago when it was "The next big thing" and then quickly shit-canned?
Yep, and actually I was so pioneering that I was doing VIDEO podcasts back then, I was one of a few people I know wealthy enough to splash nearly £300 on the first ever "iPod Video" I remember being remarkably unimpressed at the time, video content was sparse and watching videos on such a tiny screen was a real bore
Why are you taking the piss out of comedy?
Well the simplest answer to that is "Because it's what I do" in the last 4 years I've been searching, exploring, attempting to find my voice in the world of comedy, I've explored many aspects of the art form and studied Stand-up, Sketch, Improv, Clown and Bouffon under some of the best, award winning teachers available, ROLL CALL Harry Denford & Chris Head for Stand-up, Chris Head again for Sketch comedy where I formed my own little collective www.sketchy.co.uk Dave Bourne, Steve Roe, Luisa Omeilan & Cariad Lloyd for Improv where I founded the Impro Punks and "Made Up Stand-Up". Mick Barnfather, Phil Burgers (Dr. Brown) Ana Esmith, Lucy Hopkins & Cal McCrystal for Clown and finally Eric Davis (Red Bastard) for Bouffon
What I've learned is really what I knew deep down all along, I'm fundamentally a mimic, I copy peoples voices, mannerisms & behaviour, exaggerating them sometimes for comedic effect, I lampoon them as a character comic, I like to observe things, get my head around stuff, understand the mechanics of what makes things work, then I parody those things in a satirical way, usually to expose the hypocrisy, the idiocy or the folly I've discovered within them
The stand-up and the clown and needy, they need your love and validation, they need to please you in order to please themselves, that neediness and the constant validation of your laughter is what drives them to carry on performing night after night, they're addicted to your love, your laughter is their highly addictive drug and they cannot live without it for long, like all addicts they are volatile and fragile
The Satirist is different, he sees that the Emperor is naked when everyone else is foolishly admiring the Emperors new clothes, he studies humanity and understands all its weaknesses and failings, its bigotry, stupidity and hypocrisy, he wants to mirror that back to you, to take the piss out of you, to lampoon you, to show you how stupid your firmly held beliefs are, to make you understand your imperfections and the folly of your own egos, he's not malicious, he doesn't want to hurt you, he feels sorry for you, ultimately he wants to help you by enlightening you
The 2 day Bouffon workshop I did with Eric Davis this year was an eye opener for me, it provided the Eureka moment when I realised that taking the piss out of things in a benevolent way is what I've always really done
Bouffon Red Bastard - AKA Eric Davis
The Bouffon are grotesquely ugly, deformed "freaks" who were believed, like all imperfect things a few centuries ago, to come from the devil, as such they were banished to live outside of the city walls, all year round they would observe the "good" people of the city from cracks in the walls, they would use ladders and mirrors to spy on people, see inside their homes, they saw all the bigotry the hypocrisy and stupidity in society and they felt bad for the poor "beautiful people" who were blind to their own folly
Each year on "all fools day" the grotesque Bouffon were allowed into the city to entertain the "good" people, using the knowledge they'd gathered observing the citizens all year round they would lampoon the elders, mock the hypocrites and cause great hilarity by satirising all the ills of society, they helped the citizens by showing them the error of their ways, they were the outsiders who were supposed to be pitied yet they showed pity by helping the "good" people
The court jester in merry old England was another form of fool, a very powerful fool in many instances as none of the kings advisors had the balls to tell him home truths, the jester could show a king his folly by sending him up and be appreciated for his audacity, satire and parody have always been of great value to society, it is only evil and totalitarian regimes that have ever silenced them, Nazis, Bolshevist's etc
So back to the SODcast, am I ripping the piss out of the London comedy scene? YES! am i doing it out of spite, jealousy or bitterness ? NO! I hope to be the freak who lives outside the city walls, and once a fortnight gets allowed in to mock, ridicule and debase the fuckwittery that's so prevalent on the circuit, in order of course to help it
ENJOY!
Where can I subscribe to the Seanie Comedy SODcast?
Good question! click here to subscribe to the series, if that does nothing for you you haven't got iTunes or you're not on a desktop click here
I want to hear individual episodes without subscribing to the series
Here are my brand new showreels for 2014, Firstly I have a new commercial voice reel showcasing my deep, rich and educated tones ideal for advertising high quality and luxury brands, the second voicereel is my video games voice acting show reel, my highly versatile range of character voices has won me voice actor roles in a number of video games as Narrator / Advisor and indeed several distinct character voices in the same game
Potential video game developer clients often ask me what my voice acting USP is, (USP = unique selling point), well that's easy, my highly versatile voice allows me to play a whole host of distinct character voices in the same project, saving them valuable time and money, instead of auditioning and selecting scores of voice actors and then going through the logistical minefield of getting them all to work in harmony together they can have all their prototype voices from just one actor, me
Couple this with my background in character acting & comedy writing and I become much more than just a voice actor, more than merely voices I am able to help games developers to create characters, give them unique personalities and truly bring the narrative of the game to life
You can download and play this awesome new game on steam early access
I was interviewed for BBC News magazine after David Cameron the UK prime minister was labelled a "racist" for doing a comic impression of an Aussie accent
Society is truly stupid if it equates comedic mimicry to the incitement of racial hatred, I guess it seems to do this only when it is politically expedient
