The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Is Acting for Video Games Different?

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Actor, writer, and director Kate Drummond explains the differences and nuances of acting for video games versus acting for film, TV, and stage.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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what I do is I'll wear something called a motion capture suit, which is very similar to how they shot Avatar. So fully black suit with sensors all over, a head-mounted camera, not all that comfortable, but they're getting better. And basically what happens is everything I do as an actor with my body, with my voice, with my face will get transferred in real time onto an animation that is may or may not look like me. TV and film is very subtle and it's very internal. And when you watch TV and film, you see sometimes a lot of things happening without the actor doing anything, supposedly. They're doing a lot on the inside, a lot of thinking, a lot of feeling, decision making, they're being curious.

And it's very small and contained. Video game acting is more like stage in that you've got to really sort of present the feelings of your character through your body. You've got to exhale with your shoulders. You've got to really see this magical world that you're in. A lot of the video game worlds are fantastical, meaning you're on a spaceship, you're in another planet, you're underwater, and you have to, as an actor, I guess curiosity comes back around here, you have to be very curious about this world that doesn't exist in front of you and you need to make

it up. So there's a lot of make-believe. There's a lot of using all of your senses, full-body experience, but also being very truthful to the character, even though some might be aliens, some might be people. Finding the truth in the characters is always the goal, I think, of being an actor. Finding the truth in the characters is always the goal, I think, of being an actor.

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