BioShock Infinite Radio Interview
Here’s a really interesting radio interview about the new game, BioShock Infinite. The Irrational Interview team brings on Creative Director Ken Levine as well as voice actors Troy Baker (Booker DeWitt) and Courtnee Draper (Elizabeth) to chat about their process on creating the performances for the game.
What’s fascinating about this audio interview is a phrase that gets mentioned early on:
“Drain the Swamp.”
What they mean by that is the actors are using their own natural voices and they are bringing the characters to life through their own emotional reality. No pyrotechnics, no strange voices, just bringing the characters down to their essential desires and feelings in the moment.
In other words, acting.
Even Troy talks about how he found himself wanting to embellish his performance too much. The director often asked him to “Drain the Swamp” in order to simplify his performance so it would sound more believable.
This can be a hard lesson to learn as a voice actor. I often find myself using too much “sauce” on my performances in order to spice them up. What the producers want is believability. Most often, you are most believable as yourself.
Learn how to sound believable with your own voice. It will serve you well. With that solid basis, you can then expand into all sorts of different characters.
I really love that phrase. It immediately conjures images of stripping away all the artificial texture and overdoing it in the booth, down to its most visceral and real.
Brilliant.
I really want to get that game someday and it’s so true about this summary of the radio interview on Bioshock Infinite I still have Bioshock and Bioshock 2 it’s going to be great to have this one thank you for this into 🙂
What a great interview, thank you for posting. I’ve been a Troy Baker fan for a while and I’m always looking for interviews with voice actors. This one was great, Its reassuring to know that I share a very similar mindset to most of the voice actors, who’s interviews you’ve shared. I can’t wait to hear the second half of last week’s podcast, as I will be making that Journey in less than a year. I can’t wait.
Always so fascinating to hear the mindset of a professional(s).
Listening to Troy and Courtnee’s insights, it once again has me thinking of acting as something not so different from music – a mysterious and beautiful art form that one doesn’t think about so much as simply immersing one’s self in it, gradually coming to understand it as a part of yourself.
It was the English essayist and art critic, Walter Pater who first said, “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” I tend to agree with him.