WHO: VOICE OF THE DESPICABLE ME MINIONS

VOICE OF THE DESPICABLE ME MINIONS

UPDATE: THEY HAVE THEIR OWN MOVIE!! Can't wait for the film "MINIONS" on JULY 2015 :D

I am one of those who have been hit by the Minions fever! I would agree that the Despicable Me installments won't be this successful if it weren't for this pill-shaped, comic sounding creature. Let McDonald's Happy Meal minion toys testify.

But since this site is all about what we hear, and probably some of you are curious too, I have listed 10 things to know about the Minions' voices: 

The minions were voiced by none other than... Despicable Me directors themselves: Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud. While the team is thinking of how they could do the different vocals of the minions, Coffin did an audio test which the whole team loved. Chris Meledandri (Illumination Entertainment founder and CEO) listened to it and said: "Well, you're going to be the voice of the minions". He ended up doing the voices of the minions Kevin, Bob, Tim, Mark, Phil, Stuart, Additional Minions, and Evil Minions. He lent his voice to 899 Minions. Renaud also did the voice of Dave the Minion and other additional and evil minions. Jemaine Clement voiced Jerry the Minion on Despicable Me.





According to Coffin he mixed how French, English, Indian, Italian and Spanish speak because they ridiculously sound good, not necessarily because they mean something. They based it more on the sounds and rhythms, probably why the multilingual minions sound gibberish. The directors found a way to compress their voices, and whoala, a bunch of cute sounding characters were born!







There are also a lot of food references from their language, like 'poulet tiki masala' which is French for the Indian chicken dish. You would also hear them speak one or two English words to somehow give us an idea of what they're saying.










The directors invented the minions' language and called them Minion-ese. For example their language Ba-boy means "toy" and bi-do means "I'm sorry".










Speaking of food references is the Banana And Potato Song which tune is adapted from an 80's Beach Boys single titled "Barbara Ann". 


 



The lyrics to the famous Banana song is:

(Ba-ba-ba, Ba-banana. Ba-ba-ba, Ba-banana.)

Bananaaaahhh!!! Potato naaaaahhhh! Bananaaaahhh!!

Togali no potato ni gani balo banika no jiga. Ba-ba, ba-banana.

Yo plano hu. Lapa nonotu. Ma banana like a nupi talamu. Banana! Ba-ba.babana

Potatooooooohhhh!

Togali no potato ni ganibalo banika no jiga. Ba-ba, ba-bananaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

These cute minions love bananas and apples (they call it Bapples)! Taking advantage to how they go gaga over bananas, the Chiquita Brands International held various promos, gave away Minions items and even a trip to Hawaii! 

John, the 6-year-old son of Steve Carell (the voice of Gru) loves the minions so much he even asked his dad to buy him a toy after watching the film! Not being contented with it, John also asked his dad if he could voice the minions. Steve Carell recalled: ''My son wanted to do the voice of a minion, so I asked the director if he could come in at the end of one of my voice sessions. He sat in the chair and he had a mic in front of him and he just did minion voices for about five or 10 minutes. The director talked him through: 'Oh, let's have one that sounds mean.' He's just doing gibberish. He is in love with it. And he's not like an actor kid at all, he just loves those characters.''



There's a smartphone app called "Minionator" for 2010's Despicable Me. American brand Best Buy launched a new mobile app called Movie Mode which syncs with films to make our movie watching experience more fun! It launched with Despicable Me on 3D where the app can translate what the Minions' gibberish sound is saying during end credits. The app will signal you when it'll start its translation already.





These lovable henchmen want to level-up their funny sounding voices by getting into singing as well! Hear their version of "I Swear" and "Y.M.C.A." now available on iTunes. Better yet, grab Despicable Me 2's soundtrack also featuring Cee-Lo Green's Scream and tracks from Pharrell Williams among others.





To give extra "non-audible" trivias about our favorite yellow goggled friends, Steve Carell who did the voice of Gru actually named all the minions! He started randomly throwing names at them during recordings and they decided to stick with it. Also, the evil minions idea was inspired by a Looney Tunes episode where Tweety Bird drank a Jekyll and Hide formula turning him (yes Tweety's a he) into a big hairy monster. 
Now let me end this not-so-gibberish list by sharing Illumination Entertainment's Banana Song tribute to their Despicable Me 2 fans! FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/minions WEBSITE: Despicable Me