Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Sneaking In....and Out (Auditions)

Ok, I wasn't reeeeally sneaking in. I got permission, first.

Remember my checklist way back on the 7th of March right here? Yep, I am happy to say that all of those items have been checked off, including the one about sneaking into the vocal auditions, which is what I'm talking about above... and below.

After I learned when our writer was scheduling vocal auditions, I proceeded to inquire after the opportunity. *Ehem*...I nearly begged. Without having to use puppy dog eyes, he granted me a chance to experience what it was like to audition for a character in our next game.

At my appointed time, I headed down to the conference room, paused at the door to swallow my nervousness and signed in on the sheet before entering the room. What did I have to worry about? I had done my homework by reading up on the characters and practiced how I would want them to sound. After our greeting and a brief intro to who the characters were, we sat down and began to read through the provided script. Nik read through Nancy's lines, feeding me the cues to mine.


My voice sounded so small to my ears, and I focused on not reading too fast. It was a battle between what my eyes and mind processed on the the page against my mouth that could not keep up. I could not let the script scare me! I needed to stop focusing on on every detail, but instead focus on being the character, remembering the pauses, using diction, stressing the words that the character might stress, smiling at parts to change the tone. And it was such fun! There was a time or two that I asked to stop and restart, because knowing where I stumbled and going back to perfect the lines helped me to know that I did my best.

Anyways, it was a great experience. I couldn't imagine becoming a voice actor for a living, as our characters require only a few hours of recording. That's less than a day! (And we record only twice a year!) The voice actors only briefly get to see the inside of our office, and only work for a few hours while lucky little me gets to work here constantly. I get to see how everything is done, watch the entire process of how we create our games over the course of the year. Yep, I'm happy with not being a full-time (or even part-time) voice actor. As much fun as auditioning was, I want to continue working on the projects I get to work on. :)

~Little Jackalope~

5 comments:

Future Animator said...

awesome experience Little Jackalope! :D

The Decophile said...

Oh man, I would rip off a stagecoach full of gold for the opportunity to voice a ND character!

MJ said...

hee, hee!
:P

Hannah said...

Oh thank you for telling us exactly what that experiance was like! I always wondered! I hope some day they'll REALLY slip your voice somewhere into a future game! That would be so cool!
-Drew Detective

Anonymous said...

i think I would like doing an addition. I've been in a few plays and I love it. I think I'd slip up though because I love to read aloud to myself,but in front of other people I choke. Maybe on day I'll fiond a way over to your office and talk Nik into letting me try.

From me,
Silvertongue.