My childhood was haunted by a voice – a voice with a very particular tone and style of delivery that was featured in countless cartoons, TV shows, movies and documentaries. Many people [including myself] often mistook the ‘narrator voice’ for Orson Welles, but although they often sounded alike, the voice actually belonged to an actor named Paul Frees.
Among his many voice actor roles, Frees did the voice of Boris Baddenough in the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, various newsreaders and military men in dubbed Japanese monster movies, and bit parts in Scooby Doo. But for me, Frees’ voice is indelibly associated with the documentaries he narrated for The Wonderful World of Disney, and in particular, the late 1950s series of space themed films made for the show, some featuring both Walt Disney and Werner von Braun [although never in the same frame]….
HOW LIFE BEGAN is a tribute to the mid-century educational films of my childhood, that often combined education with a jazzy modernist aesthetic. Many came from the US, but many more came from Europe, and Iron Curtain countries such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary…
When I found Frees voice online and was able to emulate it in Elevenlabs, this video came together by combining the narration with the kinds of abstractions that I’ve created using MidJourney images and Runway Gen 3 animations [such as in the last video RESONANCE]. This time however, I decided to explore the possibilities of using images created using key mid-century artists as part of the prompt, and focusing on texture and depth. The discovery of a trove of vintage library music tracks on YouTube, and one in particular, Raymond Guiot’s ‘Agridulce’ was the icing on the cake. I hope you enjoy this video.
sciencefictional.net 