Dave Fennoy Chats About Voicing Video Games – And Interactive Zombies In ‘The Walking Dead’ by Rebecca Michaels
PEOPLE
Dave Fennoy Chats About Voicing Video Games
… And Interactive Zombies In The Walking Dead
Voice Actor
Dave Fennoy is a preeminent VO actor
in Los Angeles, providing voices for commercials, narrations, award
shows, animation and games.
He is known by over 30
million Hulu viewers as “The Hulu Guy.” However, he may soon also be known as one
of the heroes of a new video game The Walking Dead – as the character Lee
Everett.
Dave has many other
credits as a spokes-voice for
many, including Lexus and McDonald’s, as narrator for programs on National Geographic and
Discovery channels, as well as film and TV, including Ghost Rider, Happy Feet, Kim Possible, Ben 10 and many more.
My Love That Voice Over series of podcasts recently caught up with Dave for a fascinating interview. A transcript of Episode 2 of that interview, focusing on voicing video games is below. You can also listen to this podcast by clicking here.
LoveThatRebecca
Ladies and gentleman, welcome back to episode two with Dave Fennoy.
We are going to jump in to video
games and your extensive experience. I found
at least 31 titles.
Some of the big names that people enjoy your work on are Starcraft 2, Metal Gear, That’s So Raven, Ultimate
Spiderman, Delta Force, Star
Wars, Lara Croft, Tomb Raider and many others.
Now, the latest, of course, is The
Walking Dead. What can you tell us
about that?
Dave
Fennoy
It’s a very different kind of
video game. It’s not the “chase them
down and shoot them up” kind of game.
You get your chance to battle zombies – that’s for doggone
sure, but there is lots and lots of dialogue, lots of interaction between the characters in the game. And as a player, you have to
make decisions about what my
character says and does.
Like, your group is out and about, and some zombies
show up and you have to save somebody –
but you can only save one person. Who do you save?
LoveThatRebecca
Oh my god.
Dave
Fennoy
People in the game ask you
questions, you have a choice of several answers. What do you
answer? And based on what you do, or actually
what you have my character do and
have my character say, this has repercussions later on in the game.
new thing, right?
Fennoy
new vampires!
with this project?
Fennoy
I got an email with an audition for
the part of Lee Everett in a game
called The Walking Dead and I went, “Oh wow, so it’s like
the TV show in a graphic novel, OK.”
very natural and we really just
want your voice. This is not an odd character. This is a real guy. So we are looking for just a good actor.
Fennoy
game, you will get a picture of the
character because a lot of times you are playing some creature from another planet or you are
playing some warrior.
just kind of regular, normal and greeting
somebody. One where he might be fighting, you know,
a few different examples of this character in different mindsets.
This was not that dissimilar, except they wanted a
real person.
your experience in the games that you have been in, right?
Fennoy
you are playing one of these.
Fennoy
all kinds of strange voices.
know, somebody Rastafarian?
Fennoy
island. (Changes to African accent) You
might be an African man.
(English dialect) You might be English. Or (French) bonjour, you might be the French man. You could be almost anything.
Fennoy
character much closer to me. He is a
former college professor who – for some reason, we don’t know exactly why when the game starts – is on his way to jail when the zombie apocalypse hits.
How did they piece together the game? Because you have mentioned there will be all these different choices for the player to choose for you in
that moment. And there would be moment, after moment, after
moment of decision making.
That’s a lot of lines and variations in the actual game
play that have to all be scripted.
Fennoy
graduates of LucasArts.
Fennoy
Fennoy
did!
Fennoy
there are five episodes and we are still recording.
of what the levels the gamer
can get to?
Fennoy
show. You are in this zombie world
and we have an episode where Lee Everett and the people that he has met, the little girl Clementine that he has kind of adopted because her parents died in the zombie apocalypse, they all have to go through something. There is some adventure.
pass through …
Fennoy
are going to come
into contact with other survivors. Do they trust these people? Are these people going to help them or not help
them?
Fennoy
Fennoy
So you have people that in any other time of life would not have been thrown together, but here we
are!
going to do?
Fennoy
there in Fairfax in Northern California. A nice
little town where all the hippies go to die.
People don’t know that I have lived out there. I lived in Marin
County for a year and I grew up in the Bay Area, so I am familiar with
Fairfax. It’s totally a hippie town even still. It is like a
little Berkeley.
Fennoy
blocks long, a bunch of great
little restaurants and night clubs that have music in them, five to six
nights a week. All of them in
this three block stretch,
it’s like, “How did this get here?”
tell us about your experience. So you arrived in Fairfax and you are
tripping out, because have you ever been to Fairfax before?
Fennoy
Oakland and Berkeley. I never went to
Fairfax. That’s up the road.
that’s all north of the Golden Gate, north of San
Francisco for folks who don’t know the area. And Oakland is on the east side of the bay and this is all north. And they really feel
different too, because this area is much more countryside. And
Oakland is more urban and
so is Berkeley, even though they
had the kind of hippie …
Fennoy
the hippie-ville in the ’70s.
Fennoy
Fennoy
Fairfax a lot.
Fennoy
little studio run by a guy named Jory Prurim. It’s basically set up just to do games.
Fennoy
you give us a mental image?
Fennoy
there in the room. He has got
an iPad set up in front of his
microphone, which I think is very cool, I mean no paper, just all off the iPad.
Fennoy
line by line. I mean there are
hundreds and hundreds of lines,
which is very different
than most games. Most games, yes, you are going line by line and you are
doing it by yourself, but you do not
have so many lines.
I have recorded more for
these first two episodes – more hours – I have never recorded for so many
hours.
Fennoy
time (in standard video games) it is action oriented, and so you have fewer lines because the character has to do things instead.
Fennoy
lot of time with your battle sounds
(Dave makes some sample ooh, eh, aah sounds). With a lot of those! This
(game) is a lot more acting, which actually, in many ways, is much more gratifying.
a little bit more about that?
Fennoy
characters. You have secrets that you are trying to keep.
You have to decide, well you have
lines. The player’s actually going to decide if you lie, or
tell the truth, or say nothing, or
just answer but not lying and not telling the truth – obfuscating about
what’s been going on.
Fennoy
conversation with lots and lots of
people. So, I am in conversation with Clementine and I’m in conversation with
all the other characters in the game.
Fennoy
animation, and usually when you are doing a cartoon, there are
other actors in the room – at
least the actors you are doing the
scenes with if not the whole cast, each
with their individual microphone and script in front of them on the stand – and you are going
from the beginning to the end and
that’s how it goes.
of the actors doing it
together, like they are “live” similar to being on the theater stage.
Fennoy
Exactly.
the game player is playing the game, it feels to them as if everything
flows because they are just
moving through, right?
Fennoy
moving through. And the only reason that can happen is
have hired and
understand the context.
are framing the scene for you.
So when you are saying that line,
you know what has happened or is
about to happen or what secret you are holding and all of those factors that go into building your whole Lee Everett character and his response when you record each set of lines.
Fennoy
Emotionally, who is the person you are talking to? What is your relationship with that person? Do you like that person? Do
you not like that person? Are in
conflict with that person? Are you angry with that person? Are
you desirous of that person?
So, you have to know all those.
Fennoy
know, a cute zombie come along – aaay! You never can tell
what a guy might wanna get into. (Both laughing)
about the recording sessions for you in terms of the people that you are working with, the people that you do have the ability to work with? Can
you describe that in more detail?
Fennoy
there and probably a couple
of writers as well as Jory, the engineer. So, I will be working with
three or four people in the control room and
me in the booth.
Fennoy
I am talking to sound like
when he said his line, so that I am not shouting at this person who is two feet away from me and vice versa.
so that …
Fennoy
A lot of times Julian will
read me in with the line that came before and
context is everything. Context
is everything. You gotta know
who you are talking to, why you are
talking to that person, what is your motivation is.
It is
really an acting gig and all those same questions that an actor has to
ask himself. What do I want in this
scene? What is driving me?
play games don’t always think about
it, but more and more in the last
couple of years people are realizing in general how much video games can be interactive.
level from an emotional context
because certainly on the games that existed before this,
you could play and be interactive and
totally animated. But in this case, your emotions and your
brain really come into play more with the choices that you have to make as the game player.
In a way, player choices have to be made more
reflectively or intellectually rather than
just intuitively pushing buttons.
Would you
say that is correct?
Fennoy
gamer who is little older. Like everything else, games have
evolved. Remember “Pong”?
Fennoy
even then it was blow up this stuff, kill that
guy, so forth and so on.
I think as
gamers have gotten older and more sophisticated, this is the kind of game that they will truly enjoy. And if the critics are correct and the sales are correct, that is
exactly what is happening.
you want to leave us with?
Fennoy
that?
Fennoy
formats.
Fennoy
know all that stuff.
Fennoy
make.
Fennoy
a gamer. I am so not a gamer. I do not
play the games. I do not play any
games.
Fennoy
games.
Fennoy
however way you want to frame it or I can probably make you feel good. But you’re doing a great job and people are loving the work that you have done and they are playing these games.
work. I want to find out about
a little bit more about that, but we
are almost out of game time here. Hahah!
(Both laugh, then much more seriously&) But yeah, you know, it is a confession. Alright,
you know what? Thirty lashes and you
are good.
ABOUT REBECCA …
Rebecca Michaels hails from California but lives some of the time in Italy, currently voicing a variety of ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,English-speaking projects with folks from the U.S. as well as ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Australia, India, Germany and the Netherlands. She interviews voice over pros in her Love The Voice Over podcast series (see link below), and keeps in touch with friends and fans ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Email: rebecca@LoveThatRebecca.com
Web: www.LoveThatRebecca.com
Love That Voice Over Podcasts: www.lovethatrebecca.com/podcast_lovethatvoiceover.html
“,NULL,NULL,VoiceOverXtra – Dave Fennoy Chats Voicing Video Games – The Walking Dead – Rebecca Michaels Interview,voice acting, voicing video games, Dave Fennoy, The Walking Dead, Rebecca Michaels, Love That Rebecca, Lee Everett, The Hulu Guy, Telltale Gamers, Fairfax California, LucasArts, Jory Prurim,Voice talent and podcast interviewer Rebecca Michaels (Love That Rebecca) interviews popular voice actor Dave Fennoy about voicing video games – and Dave’s new role in The Walking Dead. It’s an interactive game requiring more acting emotion than is typical in games – and requires players to make decisions with consequences …,0,Voice talent and podcast interviewer Rebecca Michaels (Love That Rebecca) interviews popular voice actor Dave Fennoy about voicing video games – and Dave’s new role in The Walking Dead. It’s an interactive game requiring more acting emotion than is typical in games – and requires players to make decisions with consequences …,NULL
Wow! I was literally just playing this game tonight and wondering who Lee’s voice is.
I’m on episode 2 on xboxlive. I find this game innovative because you are choosing the reactions to dialogue as the player. I see that Dave had to read reactions several different ways because each choice determines the plot progression..amazing work.
I love the cartoon comic strip style of the game itself, too. Awesome Dave! Really great work!”,”2012-08-10″,”02:17:00″,”1″,”2012-08-10 02:17:34″,”2012-08-10 06:42:40″
“6HQSGR6C”,”K8Q4YWY4″,”Roy Lunel”,”roy@roythevoice.com”,”Great stuff here J. Christopher, and all relevant to me at this very moment! The information you have offered should be very simple to utilize, but unfortunately many do not follow these practical steps. It is a fundamental exercise to follow up with your clients! Thank you for your insight.”,”2015-06-04″,”12:29:00″,”1″,”2015-06-04 12:29:06″,”2015-06-04 12:33:43″
“DOH09IUZ”,”K8Q4YWY4″,”Debbie Grattan”,”debbie@debbiegrattan.com”,”Great ideas and wording here. Follow up is indeed important to maintaining that client relationship, and touching them in ways that are thoughtful without being needy can sometimes be a challenge. Thanks for the great resources.