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Recode Daily

Why video game actors are fighting to be seen

Recode Daily

Recode

Society & Culture, Science, Technology

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How does a video game character get made? And how can the gaming industry improve its standards for the real humans behind its virtual characters? FEATURING Jessica Jefferies (@jessicajcasting) Allegra Frank (@LegsFrank) LINKS The hidden world and overlooked problems of acting in video games Video game voice actors end their yearlong strike Host: Arielle Duhaime-Ross (@adrs), host and lead reporter of Reset About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us. Follow Us: Newsletter: Recode Daily Twitter: @Recode Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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I'll watch or play a video game and think, huh, is that whole performance one actor or

1:08.9

if they pieced it together with two or three people? I sort of overanalyze. Jessica Jeffries doesn't just like to play or

1:17.0

watch video games. She's actually in them. About 10 years ago she got her start in the video game industry as a motion

1:26.8

capture actor, those performers whose body movements get recorded and then

1:31.5

turned into video game characters.

1:34.0

Behind the scenes, it's a pretty cool process.

1:37.0

With performance and motion capture, you are in a studio,

1:42.0

surrounded 360 by infrared cameras, so it's not green screen, it's something entirely different from that.

1:48.5

You are in a lycra suit where on all of the joints and also specific parts of the body, like your spine, etc, you have these reflective silver balls and they send the information back, which can then be mapped

2:04.0

engines and systems and they create a digital skeleton

2:09.0

which can then be mapped in real time

2:11.0

onto a character in a virtual world.

...

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