[Mercury]

If I hadn't already desperately wanted a Dreamcast because of OMG3DSONIC!!1! these commercials would have made me want to have nothing to do with one. "It's thinking?" Pssh. Also, I'll never forgive the Dreamcast for killing Segata Sanshiro.

To be fair, though, Nintendo's ad campaigns were equally dire.

[InstantSonic]

I recall there being an interview with Drummond on how the experience was for him to voice act for Sonic Adventure. He had said that he was just given a script to read off of, put into a sound booth that resembled and nazi gas chamber, and nobody on the cast had any direction. I think that tells you right there why everyone in SA sounded the way they did, and honestly, I find the acting in SA to be remarkable given the conditions the actors were put through.

This post has been edited by InstantSonic: 25 July 2011 - 11:45 AM

[Lanzer]

InstantSonic, on 25 July 2011 - 11:44 AM, said:

I recall there being an interview with Drummond on how the experience was for him to voice act for Sonic Adventure. He had said that he was just given a script to read off of, put into a sound booth that resembled and nazi gas chamber, and nobody on the cast had any direction. I think that tells you right there why everyone in SA sounded the way they did, and honestly, I find the acting in SA to be remarkable given the conditions the actors were put through.

But if you think about it, this was the first time sonic was ever given a real voice for the games I'm sure the reason being for no direction is because there was no experience like this before. Its not like now where theres experiences to draw from back then I'm sure they were all sorts of confused about how sonic should sound like.

And no I'm not taking the cartoons or the OVA into this analysis. I'm sure DiC, ADV Films, and SEGA had different views on how sonic and others should sound like. but it is possible that SEGA used snippets of both to give the actors a general idea.

This post has been edited by Lanzer: 25 July 2011 - 12:17 PM

[InstantSonic]

Well, of course you could say that, but Sonic Team didn't handle the American voice direction. The reason why anyone prefers listening to the Japanese audio tracks is due to the fact that the Japanese actors had appropriate emotion and expression for their given situations.

Sonic could have sounded like anything at that point, English or otherwise. The emotions and expressions conveyed is where the 'direction' comes in to play. See Sonic Colors for the way direction could, and should, have been handled. Then again, everything ported over from Japan during the Dreamcast era was kinda... half-assed.

This post has been edited by InstantSonic: 25 July 2011 - 01:37 PM

[Lanzer]

InstantSonic, on 25 July 2011 - 01:23 PM, said:

Well, of course you could say that, but Sonic Team didn't handle the American voice direction.

Wait, color me stupid but who did?

I allways assumed that either SEGA or sonic team handled the voice directing and over all dubbing of the adventure games.

seiyū in japan allways put their 100% effort into everything they do unlike here. just goes to show how better the direction was...

[InstantSonic]

Well, I believe it was SOA who handled the voice direction, but it was under VERY HEAVY supervision of SOJ.

[Flare]

Lanzer, on 25 July 2011 - 12:16 PM, said:

But if you think about it, this was the first time sonic was ever given a real voice for the games I'm sure the reason being for no direction is because there was no experience like this before. Its not like now where theres experiences to draw from back then I'm sure they were all sorts of confused about how sonic should sound like.

This shouldn't be the reason for no direction... an actor especially a voice actor needs someone there to tell them what their delivery was like. A lot of the voice acting in Adventure sounded read - besides Dr. Eggman... which brings me to another point made that the actors were trying to voice to the already done animation. This makes complete sense seeing as Eggman has no lip movements it would make sense that his voice acting sounds the most natural.

[Clutch]

This is the only interview (in text, anyway) with Drummond I know about where he describes the direction.

Relevant Snippets:

Quote

Reala: Were you clued into the storyline, levels, or setup of the game before or during the production of the game, or did they keep you in the dark?

Drummond: I only received a general direction before recording each line, like "you're scared here", "this one's angry", or "you're running while you say this". That's all you get. So you just have to hope that how you're delivering a line is going to work for the visual that goes with it. For SA1, we actually did "looping" which is recording the lines WHILE you're watching the animation on a screen. That is technically harder to do, but then you're sure your delivery is going to be correct. For SA2, we just recorded lines and were coached on how each line should be read by the Sonic Team.

Reala: How many takes did you normally have to do per line? I ask because they didn't sync your voice to the japanese speaking 3d models, and I'm curious if they attempted to.

Drummond: Takes ranged between 1 and 10, depending on what the line was and how difficult it was. And yes, the lips in the game are speaking Japanese and we're speaking English, so they don't really
line up. They attempt to make the English line start when the lips start to move and stop when the lips stop, but it can't always work out
because in general it takes a lot longer to say something in Japanese than it does in English! This process was easier for SA1 when we could see the animation, but in SA2 we were just told, "this line needs to be 6.4 seconds long", for example. Then they'd time each take and use the
one that was closest to 6.4 seconds.

I feel really bad for the guy every time I read the part about Sonic X.

[InstantSonic]

I remember, what I was recalling is when he was interviewed one year at SAGE, he described it as being so harsh, comparing the conditions of the sound booth as that of a nazi gas chamber, the SOJ execs watching and listening to everything they did... yeesh.

[RGX]

Yeah, that "is" Ryan Drummond and Corey Bringas (if not his brother which I doubt.). Its pretty obvious, why they might sound a bit different could be a number of things... The voice clips in Adventure are compressed and a bit lower quality compared to a TV commercial and the fact that this was around when they first started voicing the characters.. so some inconsistency in tones may occur. Biggest example is Jason Griffith, his voice in the beginning of Sonic X was considerably different from where he was in unleashed, 06 and Brawl. You can tell its them though.

This post has been edited by RGX: 26 July 2011 - 08:43 PM

[W.A.C.]

While I knew their working conditions sucked, I'm shocked it affected their acting that badly. Kind of lazy and half assed how they didn't bother to try to rework each cutscene for each country so we wouldn't get such shitty results. :/

[InstantSonic]

W.A.C., on 26 July 2011 - 11:40 PM, said:

While I knew their working conditions sucked, I'm shocked it affected their acting that badly. Kind of lazy and half assed how they didn't bother to try to rework each cutscene for each country so we wouldn't get such shitty results. :/

Well, direction is a HUGE part of voice overs. Dubbing anything that would even be considered sub-par, without it, is virtually impossible.



Like I've stated, the cast's acting is fucking superb for what they had to deal with. They had no idea their situations and interaction the characters had to deal with, and had to guess it all off the top of their heads. As far as reworking cut-scenes, it's an industry standard to work in script changes and lip-syncing to the movements of what characters might be saying in-game, because reworking cut-scenes takes way too long, and would be costly to production. Also, when a game is ported over to the states or Canada for dubbing, they don't have the tools that the original developers work with, so it takes some improvisation. With all that in mind, take Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 for example, they did the same exact thing as Sonic Adventure with the lip-sync. It's not as noticeable so much in the first game as it is in second, though.

This post has been edited by InstantSonic: 27 July 2011 - 12:22 AM

[Hero Chao]

The VAs in the Dreamcast commercials were indeed Drummond and Bringas (Corey, not Conner.) As everyone has said already, they just received far better direction for the commercials than they did for the games, and they recorded the commercials afterward.

[Cooljerk]

Clutch, on 25 July 2011 - 11:01 AM, said:

Sonic Adventure was recorded with the actors trying to match pre-existing mouth flaps and (slow) animations. Compare how wigged out the character models act with what they're actually supposed to be saying.

In a commercial requiring fast delivery and designed with an English audio track in mind it's not as big an issue. Flaps wouldn't even need to match that well since they're on screen for such a short time.

"OH WOW! IT CHANGED SHAPES! Did you see that?!"
"-_-"

always makes me laugh, haha