“Who are you?” squeals a high-pitched voice through the control-room speakers at Hollywood’s Signet Studios.
Inside a cramped recording booth, actress Hope Levy is syncing her voice with the animation on a video monitor: a 10-year-old boy named Kei fighting with a monkey dressed in sumo garb. The boy – rendered anime-style with impossibly large eyes – is one of the stars of Ape Escape 3, a Sony PlayStation 2 game that was a hit in Japan. Now it’s being readied for North American release.
The voice-over session is in its ninth day. A half-dozen actors have uttered thousands of lines of translated dialog, painstakingly coached by producer Ryan Eames and director Jamie Mortellaro to hone the impact of every last oof! Levy, the last of the bunch, is a bubbly thirtysomething actress with the vocal chops to belt out show tunes like Ethel Merman, but the range to produce a small, childlike voice that’s perfect for a pre-pubescent boy like Kei.
Still, nailing the inflection is a challenge. “Her voice needs to be lower,” Eames murmurs as he slouches on a couch in the control room.
Mortellaro nods. Pressing a red button so Levy can hear him, he says, “That was cute, but it might have been a little bit too high. Try it again.”
The recording engineer cues the tape. The speakers emit three beeps. Where the fourth beep would be, Levy emotes into a boom mike: “Who are you?”
“It needs a little more aggression,” Eames tells Mortellaro.
“Who are you?” Mortellaro tells Levy.
“Who are you?” Levy parrots.
They decide to take a quick break, and Levy uses the opportunity to soothe her throat with honeyed hot tea. She has also brought along an herbal supplement called Silver Voice. “It’s good for talking, singing, and screaming,” she says.
Screaming can be an issue in voice-over sessions for games that feature -violence. “I’ve had directors tell me, ‘I want to hear the blood gurgling out of your neck,’” Levy says. Mortellaro adds, “It’s like, don’t just give me 15 bloodcurdling deaths. It’s give me 15 flaming blood-curdling deaths. Sometimes the actors are literally shaking when they leave.”
This afternoon, death by tedium seems more likely. Levy rolls her eyes while Eames and Mortellaro bat various intonations of the phrase back and forth. Mortellaro tells Levy: “Just give us three in a row.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Who are you?
“Who are you?
“Who are you?”
Eames twirls a pencil in his long, thin fingers. “I like A.”
“It still could be more aggressive,” Mortellaro says. Levy tries again. “Who are you?!” By this point, the phrase has ceased to have any independent meaning. It sounds almost as alien as the original Japanese, which strikes American ears as a cross between a samurai grunt and the lunch special at a strip-mall sushi bar.
“How is that?” Mortellaro asks.
“Let’s hear it again,” Eames says.
Deeper this time: “Who are you?”
“Sounds low to me,” Mortellaro says.
All eyes turn to Eames. Finally, he taps his script with the pencil. “Just about right.”
“Cool,” Mortellaro says. “What’s next?”
- Preston Lerner
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Once More, With Aggression
