Resident Evil Requiem actor had to spend '2 to 3 minutes' audibly dying during her audition, while the casting director threw out surprise instructions: 'Now a zombie has bitten your left leg'
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Voice acting: It can't be that hard, right? You never have to worry about hitting your marks or where your eyes are. Like Ron Perlman said, you go in, you rip it, you get your 40 bucks and your ham sammie, and you're outta there. Right?
Well, no, of course not. Good voice acting is a skill unto itself, and it's not easy. (And to be completely fair to the esteemed Mr. Perlman, he also said voice actors are "a pretty elite group of people" who represent "some of the most talented people in the entire business.")
And because they're reliant solely on vocalizations, voice actors sometimes even have to go a little above and beyond their on-screen counterparts to get the job done: Such as in the case of Angela Sant'Albano, voice of Grace Ashcroft in Resident Evil Requiem, who as part of her audition had to spend an extended period of time audibly dying, while various undead indignities were inflicted on her soon-to-be corpse.
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"We did a lot of improvisation," Sant'Albano said in an interview with Polgyon. "We did a couple of scenes that [Capcom] had already written, and then one of the improv prompts was, 'I need you to die for about two to three minutes, and I'm going to time you. But you can't die quickly. It's got to be a slow burn of a death. And you've got to give a death cry at the end'.
"And then, while I was dying, [casting director Kate Saxon] would give me new instructions like, 'and now a zombie has bitten your left leg'."
While Sant'Albano has numerous television appearances to her name, Resident Evil Requiem is her first game credit, and she said performing the motion capture presented some unique challenges. Doors, for instance: "There's a door, but it can't be like a 3D door, because that would block the camera sensors or the cameras," Sant'Albano said. "So it's a fake door but you have to approach it the way you would a real door. You can't wrap your hand around the fake handle, because that's not realistic."
Requiem might be Sant'Albano's first game credit but I think it's a good bet it won't be her last, given its success: Capcom announced today that the game has surpassed six million copies sold, a milestone it achieved faster than any other game in the series.
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.
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