Voicetrax Edge: LucasArts - 04/09

Weekend class Saturday evening and all day Sunday. (4/09) This appeared in the spring catalog as "The Voicetrax Edge: Game Company Voice/Dialog Directors"

Game-geeks delight. If you know what these folks are working on, then you probably have an idea of the scripts we worked. As they were all collected at the end of class, you can surmise it was pretty cool.

Evening class sessopm involved working with Sirenetta on the specific needs of LucasArts game animation. They have a style which is different from most of the game companies, reflecting the more "cinematic" aspects of their heritage. (Some of this is covered in the class "Commercial vs. Cartoons vs. Video Games") She passed out a good variety of scripts (for both men and women - an improvement to earlier versions of this course) and we chose 2-3 characters which we felt right for. As the second studio was unoccupied, we set up over there to warm up and then folks headed over to work more specifically with Sirenetta, audition style, to record two characters. After that, we were free to go.

The next day, Will Beckman from LucasArts came in, gave some interesting background on the project - "Knights of the Old Republic." Then, we played back one of the characters from the previous night (Will picked the one so we heard a broad selection of characters) and then commented on needed changes. That person then went into the booth and redid the script under Will's direction. After that round, Will suggested other roles for a second round. All takes were wild lined.

Darragh O'Farrell came in for the afternoon session. He handles more of the directing end of things. We did a round of the characters which Will had chosen, then Darragh assigned "hot off the press" characters for another round. Some of these he hadn't seen. These we did in dialogue fashion, with another student (typically the person that was "on deck").

Excellent class for this genre and company. Very specific with direction and feedback.