Re: speech synths in movies?
If anyone remembers the 80's film war games, one of the winfvision synths was used there for the voice of the computer Joshua. That was quite cool actually, sinse Joshua was this sentient computer program who was designed to win at any game, and who the film's main character accidently initiated a game of geo thermal neuclear war with meaning Joshua nearly launched all America's Nukes at the then Ussr.
I always remember the final conclusion where the main character convinced Joshua that nuclear war was like tick tactk toe, ie, totally unwinnablek, and Joshua finished with the line into dead silence just after aborting the launche of the first missile "Geo thermal neuclear war is not possible to win. Would you like a game of chess?"
I don't know which synth was used sinse I have not seen the film for a very long time, and even when i did see it it was a good few years after it's first release on tv, but I remember being amused by the synth.
I will say however, that there are occasions when human robot voices have been so good it is difficult to tell.
if you don't believe me, go and find some clips of the original Cybermen from the 1960's Doctor who. I'm pretty sure in the 60's, speaking computers were as much science fiction as people with fully cybernetic boddies, however the realization of how their voices was done is almost ierrie, even though it was a number of actors speaking through some complex analogue sound production gear in certain blends of monotone, it's a combination of the effects use and the really creepy delivery, but it really does sound like a very early generation of synth.
While the Dalek voices will always be most famous, and of course sound just as emotional and frantic as they do robotic, I think the 60's Cybermen are some of the best bits of literal prediction of sound.
A shame they changed them in the 70's to basically boom through a slight bit of distortion like over dramatic villains in a commic, which sounded actually far less like creatures who had removed all emotions. There was supposedly an explanation for this, that the Cybermen had found that mimicking emotional responses was good for intimidating people they planned on converting, but I always found the very synthetic sounding voices much more creepy and in character.
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