If you’ve been to Disney’s Animal Kingdom in the past few years and experienced Avatar Flight of Passage, you can probably hear actor David Danipour’s voice in your head saying “And, uh, fly.” Well, when the actor decided to host an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit today, you bet he was asked about that memorable line.
Danipour explained his delivery of the line after being asked if it was scripted that way:
“No, that line was not scripted that way. I just sort of discovered it on the day. Imagineering folks are very creative people so they would give me some creative freedom's as well. I do remember when we discovered that line, they did like it.
I was just given one script but on the day the script was constantly modified to fill certain time constraints. So constantly, chunks were switched from here to there throughout the day. I believe it's because they needed different takes for different wait times. So if a wait time is short, you get less preshow. There was even one take, I don't know if it made it, you guys would have to tell me since I've never been to the ride. But one take, I leave the screen for a minute or two to check on some malfunction and then return.”
Another redditor decided to go a step further and ask if his “uhs” and “umms” were a part of the script, or just something he added throughout. He also explains how an unusual process in creating the preshow led to something that was just a little off about his character:
“The uhs and umms were not in the script.
But NOT all the takes that were shot had “uhs” and “umms”. So it was edited together intentionally, I'm assuming in an effort to portray the character as someone who is not experienced at public speaking about science to lay people.
Another aspect that is not known is that the entire preshow had the audio recorded with ADR. ADR is when you dub the voice after it's been recorded. Now usually you just ADR a couple lines here or a couple lines there, because of police sirens or misplaced microphone or something that messed up that line. So one day they I get a call and they say that, 'the audio doesn't work, we need to ADR the ENTIRE thing.' So not only did I dub it all, but they also wanted an “increased energy” so my voice probably doesn't match my face, which probably provokes an “Uncanny Valley” sort of feeling that something is just off. At least that's what it does to me when I've seen the youtube clips in the past.
So back to the umms…during the dubbing session, they wanted me to really land the Umms and Uhhs so those also probably give off an 'uncanny valley' feeling as well.”
Want to see exactly what he’s talking about? Check out the video of the Avatar Flight of Passage preshow below:
You can also check out the rest of Danipour’s AMA here.