Saturday, June 13, 2009
Dissidia the American Version
So many of you have been wondering about Final Fantasy: Dissidia, so I thought I'd fill you in as much as I can.
Yes, I play Tidus in it. And yes, the American version is finished.
I recorded it back in the months of February and March, at Skylark Recording Studios in Burbank, California (Rita you're the best!). It took 5, four hour sessions to complete all of Tidus' lines and I recorded them all alone in the studio as is customary for video games. I believe that all of the cast are the same actors from each ones original games, but since we were not together I cannot confirm 100%, but I am 99% certain of it.
The sessions were very long and I was reminded of the amount of back and forth it took in recording FFX and FFX-2. What I mean by that is because every line was to be recorded to picture (watching and matching lip flap and time), it would take sometimes five minutes or more to get each line of dialogue. To give you an idea of how this differs from a regular game where we are not re-dubbing; Dissidia took basically 4 hours to record about 30 lines of dialogue. In a normal game I could finish an entire script in the 4 hours, a script that could be hundreds of lines and cues. For example, the upcoming game Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, in which I play the title character "The Fallen", I completed the entire game and voiced 2 other characters in about 3 hours and then spent the last hour doing an interview about the game and publicity videos for it. That's not to say that always happens, I've been recording Ratchet for the new Ratchet and Clank game for quite some time now but that is different also because they will bring me in for a 2 hour session here and there while they fine tune and change the story-line, etc. The folks at Insomniac are excellent story tellers (TJ you're the man!) as well as game makers (Brian rocks too!), and we've been doing these games for so long now there's a rhythm that we've found that really works. They are also incredibly generous to us actors in giving us shorter sessions to save our voices from any undue strain, as video games can be the toughest work a Voice-Actor can do.
I say all this to not say I like any one way better to record but that every job is different (one of the reasons I love being a Voice-Actor, everyday is new). I also say it to all of the critics out there that judge each of our performances, you have to remember that you never really know what is going on when things are recorded and most of the time it's a lot more than just the actor that's delivering the lines that's coming out of their mouth. For example, in the FF: Dissidia sessions the studio booth I was in was freezing most of the time. Sometimes this happens in studios because the control room (where the Director and other people are) is on the same air system as the booth, so you have many bodies in the control room making it hotter in there than in the booth where it's just you and usually a smaller space so it's easier to cool or heat. As it was in February and March it was cold and rainy but they were still running the air in the room to keep the equipment cool. I was standing at the mic shivering most of the time and had to keep rubbing my hands together, my nose felt like it was going to freeze off my face and my muscles kept cramping from the cold and standing in one place without much movement. It was not the best situation for trying to get into a character. They were offering me blankets at one point and in some of the later sessions brought in a space heater which was tricky because it would make noise sometimes. And again, we were literally recording one line (which might be all of one or two words) then we would stop and the Director, producers and engineer would all talk without my hearing because I'm in the little room watching them through the glass window that separates us, wondering if they liked what I did or hated it, etc. Then they would have to translate back and forth to each other sometimes why I would say something a certain way in the English when in Japanese it would sound totally different, then they would come back on the mic and say to me, "Okay, let's try one more but say the second word just a little faster." Because it's not fitting in the sample time that is already preset due to the re-dubbing from the Japanese. Or they would say, "This isn't translating properly from the Japanese so let's change the line to this and see if it fits in the lip sync." So we would redo it and they would watch it back and talk about it for another 3 to 5 minutes then come back to me and ask me to say it again or move on. As an actor it is very difficult to find a groove with that kind of situation, but it is the nature of the beast, it's no ones fault and I'm certainly not saying it was bad for me, just not the usual situation. I love the folks as Skylark Studios and the situation with the cold room is not a complaint, it was just the way it went that time, I've recorded many, many projects there and think the world or Rita the owner, operator. In fact, I don't know how she did it, her schedule was stacked during that time with sessions into the late evening and on the weekends and she just quietly sits there and records every word and makes us all sound great! And speaking of sounding great the second set of sessions in March were after my returning from a trip to Japan in which I got bronchitis and lost my voice for about a week, so the first session back I got to the studio got on the mic and we all realized that there was no way I could record that day as I sounded like a frog doing an impression of Michael J. Fox. So they had to postpone and come back a week later. It was pretty crazy all the stuff that happened in the recording process of this game.
So , anyway I wanted to give you all that are fans of the FF series a little look into what went into my sessions for Dissidia. I think the game is gonna be great and a wonderful experience for fans of the series. It's really cool to see all of these characters together on one screen at the same time. Plus, for me there was many parts of the story that answered a lot of questions I had after FFX 1 & 2. I hope you all play it all the way through and enjoy it. And for those of you that are tough critics of my voice as Tidus, I wish I could tell you that you'll love me in this one but, the truth is, that's up to you. I can only tell you all that I truly love being a part of the Final Fantasy world and am honored that the folks at Square asked me back. I hope to do more for them in the future.
Best,
James
