Chaos Wars for the PS2

Some people are still under the impression that it’s easy to do the voice acting for a video game. You just read some dialog and head home and call it an early day. One of these people seems to be the President and CEO of O~3 Entertainment, Chris Jelinek.

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Web 2.0 Gloss Spilled All Over It

There are a lot of changes going on here at your friendly neighborhood voice over site recently, and I can tell you that a lot more are coming. For right now though, we’ve just switched to a complete redesign, but it’s no where near finished. Many minor changes will be popping up so keep yours eyes opened.

Some elements may just not look correct right now, but I’ll be fixing and cleaning up all the older posts soon.

OH! And I know it’s already June now but I forgot to mention that there is a nice write-up of VoiceOverture.net in the May issue of Julie Williams’ Voice Over Insider magazine.

You can check it out the May issue here, but just be warned that the link takes you to a .PDF. Slower connections beware!

Image Credit: Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Michael Hollick has voiced the most well-known character in the year’s biggest blockbuster game when he took on the role of Niko Bellic in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 4. Now Michael was paid for his work and at a little over union scale he took home roughly $100,000. Not nearly as much as a famous-faced screen actor would have netted for a large role such as this, and Mr. Hollick will most likely never see another dime for his work. No residuals or royalties will come his way at all even after his voice will be heard by millions in online campaign and television commercials due to the current structure between union contracts and the game developers and publishers themselves.

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Voice Over Video Sunday

I know of Rodney Saulsberry. You know of Rodney Saulsberry. I know that you know of Rodney Saulsberry. I know you know you I know of Rodney Saulsberry. His voice can be heard everywhere from movie trailers, to commercials, to cartoons, to video games, but he may be most well known in the industry for his voice over instructional seminars, the most recent being at the Voice Coaches Advanced Marketing Expo and Conference.

Unfortunately this isn’t a video from that seminar, but it is a short interview with Rodney on a local new station promoting his book. The interviewer doesn’t toss up the most in-depth questions (she enjoys the fact that voice over actors don’t worry about their hair), but Mr. Saulsberry does manage to get across a few good tips about the industry. My favorite part of this video — and maybe it’s just that great voice that helps get it across — is how upbeat and inspirational Rodney is. The next time he holds a seminar in the New England area you can bet that you’ll find me there.

Also, does anyone know when this clip is from? He promoting his book YOU CAN BANK ON YOUR VOICE: Your Guide to a Successful Career in Voice-Overs so my guess is sometime after 2004.

With Grand Theft Auto IV being released on April 29th it stands to be the largest game in the series with help from its extensive music and audio tracks. With that in mind I thought it would be fun to take a look at some past GTA voice over recording sessions.

This video takes us all the way back to the turn of the century when recording for GTA Vice City began. Vice City is known for its enormous cast of big name actors providing voices for the game and developer RockStar just happen to have a camera rolling as they recorded their characters. Please keep in mind that this was an M Rated game and the language may not be suitable for everyone.

Devil May Cry 4’s Dante voiced by Reuben Langdon

$500,000 for one voice over session. It sounds like a wonderful dream, doesn’t it? Well, that’s the payout that one unnamed film actor received for his work on a video game, also unnamed. That was just the precedent setting paycheck with another film actor requesting $750,000 for a one hour session on another game, but ultimately being denied.

Reuters has an article up regarding the raising of voice over rates and the infiltration of the out of work film actor in video games.

The video game industry is a prosperous emerging market for the voice over artist with $18 billion in sales in 2007. This has, of course, caught the eye of film actors wanting a piece of that money pie at the detriment of the voice actor.

But is it all bad?

While they may taking away jobs from voice over artists, they are also raising the base rates for these video game sessions. Depending on how you view it, a voice over actor can now make more money in this sector. But, at the expense of more readily available jobs.

Read the article

BioWare’s latest RPG, Mass Effect, has single-handedly paid all the salaries of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada’s voice over community. CLICK HERE for the story.