Giving the voices ‘faces’

Walking along a particular street in Makati, wearing shades which compliment their total packaging, Pocholo “The Voicemaster” Gonzales and voice artists Brian Ligsay, Lily Nichols, and Liesl Bumatoc remain unrecognized by the bystanders who are there until they start throwing their ever-famous lines in different voice over projects they have already done. And that is the only time when people, exposed to different media and advertisements of different sorts, realize to whom they are talking to.

This may seem weird—being known as a voice and not as a person with a face. Yet, in a voice artist’s point of view, it is something that is not to be worried about. Besides, whenever moments of revelation like this come, there is always surprise. The crowd, after recognizing the voices and finally realizing that who they are talking to is the real person behind each voice, is always mesmerized. It is one of the things explored in the July 2 episode of ABS-CBN’s SabaDocu. The documentary exposed the real people behind these voices. On the other hand, the fact that people only recognized them after they spoke and delivered some of their well-known lines already implies a general truth with regards the nature of their professions.

So, to give them faces, today’s episode of ABS-CBN’s SABADocu focused on fleshing them out and informing the general public of who they are as persons as they talked about their personal stories which are involved about their personal lives and circumstances, professional life, and even the stories behind some stories which inspired them to go on and fight for what they do now. Through these, they are given faces.

This was done to the persons who were behind voice overs applications in different media and forms of communication from radio, television, mobile phones, computer games, and even voice over applications in different places like the MRT.

This episode might have been a road to their exposure—visually—and helped them to be known to the consumers and their fans that, after all these years, might not have any idea who they are. At the end of the day, however, there is still this tendency that people who were able to watch this lose in their memories the faces of these artists and go back to the state of being remembered as voices.

Yet, this is never a bad thing. As these voice over artists put it, one of the many things to love about being a voice artist is anonymity. Unlike celebrities, they are not mobbed and stalked. Even better, they would never go out of the limelight because they never get really famous, in the first place.