An Introduction to Characters
with Elaine Clark

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Welcome to High Notes, a podcast on the art and business of voice. My name is Melissa and I've worked commercially with my voice for over 27 years. In this podcast, I'll be talking to those who consistently hit the high notes in our industry and will be exploring the craft and creativity behind the business. Whether you're a seasoned voice professional or simply curious about the magic that happens in front or behind the microphone, this podcast is your backstage pass to learning just some of the secrets of the trade. Make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to High Notes on your favourite podcast app. And be sure to check out the show notes at brava.uk.com/podcast for more information about this episode and more.

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In this Women in Games special, we talk to BRAVA Master Characters Coach Elaine Clark, based in San Francisco. Elaine has been acting, producing, [00:01:00] casting and directing video games, toys, animation and anime for over 40 years, and she'll share some stories on her extensive experience and reflect on how the industry has changed over the years.

 

Elaine will also introduce us to the six-week Characters Foundation course here at BRAVA. And talk us through what we can expect. Find out more about the course and women in games in this episode's show notes. 
We are really thrilled to welcome our Master Characters coach Elaine Clark to our session tonight.

Elaine Clark: Hello, I'm happy to be here. 

Melissa Thom: So you've worked on close to 100 video games, 200 toys, an anime series including Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, so all areas of the business. How does that experience impact the way you teach voice talent, especially here at BRAVA? 
Elaine Clark: Well, not only have I been an actor, but I've been on all sides of the business.

So, I've directed, cast, produced, audio [00:02:00] engineered various things, so I look at it from the full perspective of how will this get your attention from a casting director, how will this be helpful to a director to save them time and be very efficient. How to sound good on the mic without having to do a lot of tweaking and editing, and then your acting chops.
And I say one of the things that's really so amazing about your students at BRAVA is how talented they are and how dedicated to the craft of acting. That they're studying it, they're working on it, and it's, it's really outstanding. 

 

Melissa Thom: It's such a baptism of fire working with Elaine and one thing that I've always noticed is in how skilled you are at bringing in beginners, people that haven't necessarily studied characters before because you've worked with talent for so long. Tell us a bit about your background and experience. How did you start in this game? 

 

Elaine Clark: In the game? Well, I was a theater major in college, moved to [00:03:00] San Francisco, got into advertising, voicing that, then I got into writing copy and then, well, Silicon Valley happened, so I got more into the corporate world and then the video game industry started, so I started casting and directing and eventually producing.

And audio engineering, a lot of video games from the nineties on. So I still continue to do that, but I feel like starting in the beginning, when you saw the evolution has given me a lot of history to help. And what I see in students is their potential. And I see from a casting director's point of view, that if you can do this, you're going to solve someone's casting problem.

 

Melissa Thom: Having that experience across, but from that early nineties. Just to have witnessed the explosion of gaming and how things have changed, can you give us any sort of brief examples of how voice acting has changed from the 90s to now? Is there anything, particularly with gaming, I guess? [00:04:00] 

 

Elaine Clark: .Well, I mean, it's come a long way.

In the, in the 90s when they moved from DVD, before that there were just arcade games primarily, and that was a lot of, ooh, ah, body blow, ooh, what you doing, you know, just a lot of little. Little snippets of stuff. Then when I went to DVD. And then it was like so much information, which we soon realized wasn't enough.

And so they were able to build out the story and the music and so they, it got more involved. And then as technology changed, the realism came in, you know, really being in the moment. And seeing things and then with virtual reality, then getting into that meta world where you're speaking from the inside of someone's mind.

So they're going, Hmm, should I take a left or a right? I'm not sure. Let's hope this works. You know, so you have a lot of that internal dialogue that wouldn't have played out in the beginning years. 

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Melissa Thom: Yeah. And I guess the narratives are so much more [00:05:00] sophisticated than they were in the nineties, right? 

Elaine Clark: Well, yeah. I think a lot of it is, is based on Greek mythology, you know, and then, and sci fi. So they take sort of the, the general mythological issues and then build something out of that. So I think that has been the same. Throughout time 

Melissa Thom: To be a successful voice actor is about the business side of it as well. Often we teach all the skills and all of that, but how do you prepare students for the business of character VO, especially in our course at BRAVA.

Elaine Clark: I also got a degree in education. So being a theater major education, voiceover, putting it all together, I started a voiceover school and 1986, which I had for, for 32 years.

And with that educational standpoint, I, I. introduce a concept. So I layer one concept after another. So every week. So at the end of six weeks, you have all these concepts together. I find that if you just dump all that information on [00:06:00] there, you solve the problem of that one job at that time. But most of the students didn't realize how they got there.

But when you break it down to the various elements, and then you go forward with that, then you know how to solve that. 
Melissa Thom: Yeah, one thing that I think this course is really important in doing and what Elaine does so well is introduce you to all the different elements of characters. Elaine is such a master in what she does, within five minutes, I guarantee you everyone moves from that fear element to actually enjoying it.

So that group experience I think is really key. 

So another question for you, Elaine. Do you believe you have to be a professional actor to learn and master character VO? 
Elaine Clark: I think if you have an open mind to add on and learn and you don't have an acting background, you can get into the field.

Will you at some point realize that you need to take improv or acting classes? Depending on the type of work that you're doing. And that's a [00:07:00] choice of how you want to improve your performance. And other people who might be stage actors might be blowing out the microphone. And they have to pull down and, and use that same information but for a microphone, so it's going not to the back row of a theater, but through the little tiny diaphragm of the microphone that's about the size of a thumbnail.

Melissa Thom: What would you say to anyone with little or no straight acting experience about studying character VO? Can they do it? Can they join in as well? 

Elaine Clark: I think if you're willing to play, one of the things that they always talk about in acting class is connect with your inner child. And so if you're willing to play and do funny things and get out of your comfort zone, absolutely.
Melissa Thom: Can you talk us through the skills you need to master this genre? 

Elaine Clark: Some people don't like using the word characters because they want to be very specific about what type of character. Is it video game acting? Is it animation acting? Is it toy acting? What is it? Those are all stylistic changes. But overall, what we're looking [00:08:00] for is someone who incorporates that character - you totally believe them and their actions are based out of the truth of that character. So, how to do it using word emphasis, how to do it using the arc of a story, how to set it up in different ways. And what makes video games difficult is that you have your beginning, and maybe it's a cinematic, that it, that they're beginning, telling a story and setting the stage for it. And then you have all these different iterations based on how the player does. So either the player succeeds or they fail. And so having that open mindedness to play it in all those different ways, or knowing that you're really dealing with your imagination, the more that you can, connect with whatever you've experienced, either through playing video games, through life, through watching television or movies, what you can, you know, use in your experience, that's what's going to make it come alive. And that's what gives you comfort. So [00:09:00] just, you know, what I try to do is connect those synapses so that they're all there and you feel like you have a baseline of doing anything.

Melissa Thom: When you come to this, there's a lot to learn, by the way. It's not easy, but it is. Done with so much grace and fun and laughter together as the group that we have. Quite often you find that the people that you are in a character's group with are VO friends for life. It's just something that happens and everybody stays in touch and it's a lovely thing.

How hard do you think it is today to break into the gaming industry or any industry that requires character work? 
Elaine Clark: I think if you have something to offer that people need, you have a clear path. You're solving a problem a different way. So, if you can merge dialects, or you have different ways that you can use your voice, that there have very few people that can do that.

We're all unique people, and we have to show our, uh, personality, our take on [00:10:00] it, and that's really what opens the door. But if people are thinking, I've done some training, I have a demo and now let's sit back and wait for people to hire me, that's not the way it works. 

Melissa Thom: Can you just take us through some of the games that you've worked on maybe as a voice actor to start with and which of those have been your favourite and also what challenges have you faced with some of those?
I'd love to hear about your experience. 

Elaine Clark: I want to talk for a moment about stuff in the early days. So. I think one of my first jobs to cast and direct was Mario's Time Machine. Now, this was before Charles Martinet became Mario. So, there are 120 characters, and I needed to find people who could do at least three accents each.

And if they could do 12, that saved me time in the studio. That was a challenging thing. I have a notebook that's about this thick about how to do that. I was directing Star Wars chess and the actor who booked the job as Darth Vader, [00:11:00] believe it or not, as a chess piece, brought in a vase with a little bit of water and then he would just go and duck and talk into the vase.

And it sounded fantastic. So I thought, well, he spent some time thinking about it. Everyone else was just going, ah, they'll digitally change this. But this guy said, let me try this. And we were like, that sounds really good. So that was an interesting thing. What I discovered with directing the original American adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is that people's voices, change throughout the day. So it was episodic and I had to make sure that the time that I scheduled for the different actors were at the same time of day. Because if I got 'em at a different time, they were either higher or lower and we usually have to go back and rerecord 'cause it just didn't match.

Melissa Thom: So talk us through a little bit of the six-week course, if you can. What kind of things will people be doing? 

 

Elaine Clark: Well, [00:12:00] each week we'll work on a different genre and technique. So, and everyone has a recording that they do, and they send it in, and then the beginning of the following week, we listen to it together, and I tell you what was very successful, what could use improvement.

But it's, I'm very, very precise rather than, oh, that's wonderful. That's so good. It's like, oh, that's so close. If you had just done this, you could have booked the job. So I'll be very specific about what the people have done and the research that they've put into it, how that will generate work and how that is useful or needs a little bit more work because one of the reasons for doing a character class is that when the auditions come in, there's no time to develop a character overnight.
They take time. I really like people to have their character wander around the house, talk about their likes and dislikes, you know, as they're, as they're going through, I hate dust or I love dust. Dust bunnies are my friend. [00:13:00] Oh, there's one now. 

You know, so that you know how to develop your character. 

Melissa Thom: And what's really interesting about working with Elaine, certainly from my point of view, is that Elaine has got experience both as a voice actor, a producer, and a casting director.

So you will start to understand maybe the different mental processes that you go through as a voice actor. Imposter syndrome kicks in, fear kicks in, you might start sweating, who knows? But then you'll also understand it from the casting director's point of view, and then you'll understand from the producer's point of view.

And if you can always do that in your work, you'll be fine. You're able to give them what they need a lot more. 

Elaine Clark: Sometimes an actor thinks, Oh, I'm not good enough. You know, you don't like me. You don't want to cast me. We're going to like, please, we want you to, we're giving you direction so that we can cast you.

So that's a compliment. If you just think of it that way, they care enough to say something. I learned this a long time ago in going into auditions. If they just went great, thank you. You knew that you didn't book it, but if [00:14:00] you stayed there and they tweaked it and they worked on it for a while, then it was a bit more work.

Melissa Thom: So if you want to find out more about the foundation course, it's six weeks, two hours every Thursday. It starts on the 15th of February. It's online, so have a look at the website if you're interested in that. Please do follow us on our socials on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, if you want any updates.

Before we go, Elaine, anything else you kind of wanted to share about, about what that six week class is like and what you're looking forward to? 

Elaine Clark: Well, I think it's very efficient, I would say, and the support that everyone has for one another. And we're going to laugh. If you screw up, we're going to laugh just as much as if you do something that's funny.

And so laughter helps us. Move our career forward. It also releases whatever tension we might have. 

Melissa Thom: It's always a joy to have you either online or in person. Thank you so much, Elaine. So goodbye. 
 

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​You've been listening to High Notes, a podcast on the art and business of voice. Thanks for joining us on this episode of High Notes. Show notes and transcripts for this and all past episodes can be found on the podcast page of brava.uk.com. To find out more about our work at BRAVA and receive more information and tips about the world of voiceover and voice acting, subscribe to our newsletter or visit brava.uk.com/subscribe.

 

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