The voice acting talent of Raven McGregor, Adam Rice and Lisa Borello has turned a pet project into a YouTube viral hit. (Courtesy Raven McGregor)
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If you haven’t spent any time with YouTube in the past year, month, day or hour, you’re likely Amish or spend a great deal of effort avoiding people and their suggestions of things you “absolutely need to check out.”
Did you see (blank)? is generally followed by “on YouTube,” and among the thousands of potential YouTube stars, a trio from Kahnawake has taken a step towards minor online celebrity.
NamelessDubs is a YouTube channel brought to you by the voice-acting talent of Lisa Borello, Adam Rice and Raven McGregor, and some locally-produced videos have been seen by over a million people on the site.
“Absolutely not,” said Borello when asked if she expected anything close to this kind of attention from the videos. “When me and Adam first started the channel, we were just posting for fun and then 1,000 views freaked us out. We were like, ‘oh my god!’ Then, as it kept going on, we had videos with like a million views, and we were like, ‘what the hell? How did that happen?’ We were just flabbergasted.”
The short videos feature comic strip stories done by artists that the team voices.
“We go on Tumblr and find artists and ask them permission if we can use their art and their comics to make our dubbing videos,” said McGregor.
The group started making videos using comics based on the role-playing video game “Undertale.” Videos based on Legend of Zelda, Killing Stalking Comic strips and scary stories followed.
The concept was simple for starting the YouTube channel.
“Voice acting is something I want to do professionally,” said Borello. “It’s something that I want to get into, so starting this channel was a way for me to do something that I want to do professionally, but doing it for fun.”
Voice acting has always fascinated Borello, who tries her hand at a variety of voices throughout the pieces.
“Ever since I was a kid, it was amazing to me that people could make such interesting voices,” she said. “When I hear voice actors doing really interesting voices, I was always like, ‘wow. How do they do that? That sounds so good.’
“I was always really impressed with the way you can express yourself through your voice and make yourself a completely different person.”
Actually getting behind the mic has taught the aspiring voice actor much about the craft.
“It’s a lot of practicing,” said Borello. “I don’t know if normal people do it, but talking to yourself is a big part of just practicing. You have to talk to yourself all the time just to develop new voices.”
The group would like to take professional voice acting classes and perform professionally. Borello admitted that acting on stage or in front of the screen is not her ideal venue.
“Acting on stage, it’s very intimidating,” said Borello. “I would get very anxious in front of a lot of people, and that’s why voice acting is such a good place for me. You don’t have to stand in front of literally 300 people. You can sit in front of your computer and then 300 people can listen to you but you don’t have to stand in front of them.”
