Sally Clawson

Where do you start when you book a job doing characters for a video game? Well, if you're Sally Clawson, you take over! Taking us through a recent session, she describes what to expect, where to start, and what to ask for. She also addresses the importance of physicality and managing your energy level. Sally has done voices for Lucas Films, Macys, Apple, Saturn, Yahoo!, Telltale Games, and many more lucky clients.

Transcript

IVC embraces the use of audio and video as teaching tools -- and you should too. Examples come to life when heard, and become 3-D when seen and heard. We provide a transcript to help you with note taking or searching our site…but recommend that you push "play!"

Hey peeps. Sally Clawson here again. Hi. Guess what we are going to talk about. Mmmhmm. Video games. Love em. Yeah. You? Okay.

So. This is what happened to me. I'm just going to give you a typical day of going to a place to do the video game. First of all, most of you should know that lots of times when you do video games they haven't been released yet. So you have to be on the down low about what you've done and who you've just played. That's why I am not going to give you any details. But I'm out there. On your video game. On your X Box. Mmmhmm.

Okay. Here we go. I get there. I have no idea what characters I am going to play. I just get called by the company, and they say "Hey come on in, we've booked you for three hours." And that's as much as I know. Yeah? I show up and he gives me a stack of scripts of the characters I am going to play and he just sort of riffs off the names. For example, yesterday I played a fairy, a cheerleader, a pirate, and a mom. Yeah? So, it can be a little bit overwhelming. Because you come in and you don't know who you are doing, and you have your stacks of scripts.

Take over. Right? You are the artist. You are the one there to give the work. It's your work, you're doing it for them, they are paying you. Just talk to your engineer, and just say, "Okay, can you talk to me about, you know, how much this person talks, how much they are in the game?"

You know, you can look at the scripts. Which one is longer? Start with the probably the shorter one, provided it's not screaming and yelling, or you know, over the top. Basically what you are trying to do is you're trying to manage your energy level. Yes? You want to manage your energy level, you want to take care of your voice in particular. So, look at all of your scripts, talk to your engineers so that you know how you can do them and in what order. Save the big energy, loud voice things for last. By then you'll be warmed up. And you don't want to lose your voice right in the very beginning. Okay?

So I did the cheerleader first because she was just standing on the side lines sort of cheering. It wasn't a lot of yelling actually. Then what did I do? I did the fairy. She was at a party getting hit on. So that was pretty fun. Then I did the pirate because she was the biggest character, but she didn't have a lot of yelling and stuff; but she gave a lot of instructions to the game. That's the other thing. You know you are going to be serving out like instructions to the puzzle and how to solve the game and talking to the player. The last one I did was the mom because the mom had to sing. And she was a lot older. So I put my voice up in a higher register. And I usually don't want to do that to my voice. And she had to sing this looping song over and over again because it was helping the player solve the puzzle. Yes?

So. Um. Then we start. And there's the script in front of you. And you can ask for a highlighter and you can ask for pencils so you can highlight all of your lines because there is all kinds of different lines. And it's right off the cuff. It's right there in front of you. If you need to read it first, talk to the engineer. "I need to read through what she is saying." So that you know what you are talking about, read the line before you. Read what they are saying to you. If you don't understand, talk to the engineer and say, "Hey! What are they saying to me?" Sometimes you can even get the engineer to feed you the line before. Right? And it's going to help you be able to respond in sort of a real way. Yeah?

So, um the other thing you can ask for--and do ask for--is a picture of the character. Yeah? Have them go get you the picture, come back in, and look at the picture of the character so you can tell that the cheerleader is about 20. Yeah? She's about 20 and she's going to cheer for the people. Yeah! Right? (That was sort of dorky.)

Then, the fairy is at the party, right? And you can get a picture of her. She's got her fairy costume on and the guy's hitting on her, but she's not really into him. So she's going to be like just be a little more laid back, a little more pulled back from him because she's really not into his cheap, sexual innuendo.

Then we have the pirate, who, like I said, she runs her own ship, so she was actually a little more in charge. She actually had a little bit of a deeper voice. But she was also hot, so she had a bit of warmth in her voice. So she sort of ordered people around. And she would tell them they had to go get an expert. Or they had to do these five steps before they could get on her ship…if you know what I mean.

Then the mom. She was like this mom. And she was standing like this. And she would talk to her son like this because she was so worried about him. Okay? So she was sort of like an over-the-top mom and she had this big song she had to sing.

So, you can see that a lot of what I am doing is physically in my body and I'm looking at who they are. So if they're young, if they're hot, I'm going to warm up my voice a little bit. If they're a little more distant, I am going to step back. And if they are a little bit loud and brassy or yelling or singing, I'm going to put them near the end, and just kind of try to go over the top a little bit.

See ya!

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