The Teen Voices Of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Actually Recorded Together
Thanks to the nature of the medium, actors in animation don't have to be in the same room together to share a scene. In most productions, actors' voices are recorded and edited ahead of time, and the animators add their physical acting after the fact. It's typically more common for animated productions to record each of their actors separately, then edit together a vocal track before the animation begins. Indeed, if one has ever seen a behind-the-scenes video of voice actors in a booth, one might see how recording lines can become very tedious as actors will have to repeat single lines over and over again until the director hears a take they like. It's quite rare for actors to play out entire scenes the way they appear in a final animated product.
In certain television shows over the years, however, that practice has been eschewed. Some producers prefer their actors retain their ability to play off each other, reacting in real-time, talking over each other, and generally lending a more natural performance to the show in question. This was famously done for shows like "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters," "Batman: The Animated Series," "The Powerpuff Girls," and "Avatar: The Last Airbender," all of which liked to gather as much of their cast as possible into one recording booth.
In movies, entire-cast recordings are all but unheard of, save for a few notable pairings. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, for instance, recorded their lines together for "Toy Story," as did John Goodman and Billy Crystal for "Monsters, Inc." Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro shared a booth for "Shark Tale." And, according to a recent behind-the-scenes interview with executive producer Seth Rogen, the four lead actors of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" (in theaters August 2) did the same.
Abbey, Brown, Cantu, Noon
The four leads of "Mutant Mayhem" are Micah Abbey (Donatello), Shamon Brown, Jr. (Michelangelo), Nicolas Cantu (Leonardo), and Brady Noon (Raphael). Of the four, only the 19-year-old Noon has had a notable acting career prior to this, having appeared in most of "Boardwalk Empire," as well as the feature films "Good Boys," "Marry Me," and as the lead character in the two animated "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movies. The four ninja turtles are brothers, and, as such, require a certain kind of brotherly antagonism that anyone with multiple siblings might recognize. They love each other, but they don't always get along.
Rogen points out that in every single iteration of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," almost all of the actors portraying them were adults. He wanted, then, to finally zero in on the "teenage" part of the title, and cast actual kids in the roles; the current cast is between the ages of 15 and 19. Abbey noted that every single scene required him and his three co-stars to be in the room at the same time. What's more, their movements were filmed, giving the animators a physical basis on which to form the characters' animated performances. Co-director Jeff Rowe said in the video that he liked the notion of all four characters talking over each other, which is very uncommon in animation; usually, lines are separated out for clarity's sake. "It was so much more alive!," Rogen said.
Brown bragged that he and his co-stars improvised a lot of their dialogue, a thought backed up by Rogen who loved hearing the organic, awkward insults the cast would hurl at each other while in character.
Cantu noted that the directors didn't tell them how to be teenagers. They were merely allowed to be teenagers.