MouseStation 208 – Mark Silverman, the voice of Rod Serling
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Run time 0:31:02
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We celebrated their 200th show with a balloon drop on the MouseStation (you’ll have to take our word for it, we forgot to take pictures). We realized that there’s probably over a solid week’s worth of audio between all of the shows that we’ve recorded, and we’ve actually spent months worth of time working on the podcast.
Featured Topic – Mark Silverman, the voice of Rod Serling
In this week’s feature, Mark and Mike talk with Mark Silverman, who dubbed dialog for Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attraction, among other Disney voiceovers.
Mark S. (as opposed to host Mark G.) talked a bit about how he started out doing imitations of people, and doing imitations of Maxwell Smart (original Don Adams version) and Rocky Balboa. We then started talking about Disneyland fanaticism. Mark S. used to go into the parks and record audio from attractions, then imitate those voices.
He used to love The Twilight Zone, and would do a Rod Serling imitation, though he really didn’t work on it. When he got the audition for the Tower, he tried as often as he could to talk like Rod Serling, and he got the job, including the approval of Rod Serling’s widow. While going in to Imagineering to record the voiceovers, he just was in awe of all of the models and drawings all around.
Mark S. originally wanted to be an animator, and he used to look up famous animators and give them a call, trying to figure out how they did what they did. He once got to chat with Woolie Reitherman for about half an hour. Eventually, he used to go to a restaurant in Burbank called Alphonse’s, where the animators used to spend a lot of time, and he would hang out with them. He also used to call Imagineering to ask questions.
Mark G. noted that a lot of the animators and Imagineers, especially the old guard, love what they do so much that they seem to not mind any time that someone wants to talk to them to learn about what they do.
When Mark S. went in to record for the attraction, he even brought in bubble gum cigarettes so that he could hold them in his hand to better channel Rod Serling. It only took him about 2-3 hours to get the whole thing done, and it went very smoothly. He went back in to record some additional narration for the version of the Tower in Disney’s California Adventure.
Mark S. talked about the incorrect rumor that Disney digitally removed a cigarette from Serling’s hand. Mark G. noted that the same thing is rumored for Walt.
He did not go back to record anything for the version of the Tower in Paris, as it’s the same as the DCA version. Tokyo’s Tower does not have a Twilight Zone.
Mark S. ended up doing a voice over for Fred MacMurray for the end of The Happiest Millionaire. He also did the voice for Friend Owl as part of the Bambi Platinum Edition CD.
The interview was running long, so we decided to hold the rest of the interview for next Wednesday’s show.
We’ll have the rest of the interview on next Wednesday’s feature show.
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Wrapping up
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Thanks to our audio engineer and sound editor Steven Ng.
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