Karl Urban Confesses One Thing He Really Hated Doing For The Sea Beast
Karl Urban is having a great year. His work on Amazon's superhero satire series "The Boys" has been well documented on just about every popular culture website there is. In comparison, his work on Netflix's animated feature "The Sea Beast" feels as though it's swimming a tiny bit under the radar, and that's a shame because it's a phenomenal film. Despite a relatively small amount of media coverage, "The Sea Beast" had a staggering amount of Netflix users tuning in on its debut weekend. For those who have yet to watch it, it's a piratical version of DreamWorks' "How to Train Your Dragon" mixed with Disney's "Treasure Planet" that shares an incredibly powerful message about the lethality and lies of imperialism. And there are cute critters!
At the heart of the film are two characters, one of whom is Jacob Holland (Urban), an ocean-bound hunter who once believed it was his duty to invade foreign lands for his people's safety. He's charming and bold and dressed exactly like "The Little Mermaid's" Prince Eric, so loving him is not so much an option as it is a requirement. For Urban, though, there was one part of the misguided man that he rather disliked portraying.
Karl Urban disliked performing voice foley
In an interview with Collider, Karl Urban was asked what it was like to record running, fighting, and other non-dialogue sounds for "The Sea Beast." He had quite the honest response and said, "I've got to confess, I hate doing that. All the little grunts and groans and, 'Uh, ah, ooh.' It feels really ridiculous when you're in the booth and it's like, 'Okay, now we're going to do efforts,' and you're just like, 'Oh, please.'" He continued, "You've been in the sound booth for four hours, and then the last thing you do is like half an hour of efforts." Although Urban may feel silly recording those bits, he did admit that he would rather do them himself than someone else.
There's an official term for such sounds — voice foley. On its own, foley is a term that's used for sound effects, like the crunching of boots on gravel or the clashing of swords in battle. Voice foley simply covers the specific branch of sounds made by animals or people that aren't considered language. To get an idea as to how crazy it looks for anyone to perform voice foley or, as Urban labeled it, "efforts," consider this video of Hugh Jackman doing that very thing for "Logan."
Listen, voice foley is genuinely an important part of any film that fleshes out the established world, whether animated or not, but that doesn't change the fact that it's probably one of the silliest aspects of professional acting.