[SUGGESTION]: Do a public casting call for voice actors.

Bluedog164

I think we need a public casting call for those who do not have agents. Some SAG-AFTRA actors do not have agents and are looking for a new agents. I know of many actors who look for agents to represent them, so why can't we have a public casting call for those in SAG-AFTRA and Ficore? Or even for those who are not a part of the union? Most actors are non-union, so why not make the most of what is currently available on the market? It is my opinion that this would be an amazing resource to have, especially with new websites like SkillsHub, which Jennifer Hale created, and many others that make it easier than ever to post a public casting call from each website. I have been saying that we should have a public casting call for well a year now. Plus it's just my opinion ZOS can do whatever they want. But this is what I would suggest.

alternatelder

No thank you, because then they'd hire "content creators" and it'd end up cringey voice acting like in Cyberpunk. Just please stick to professional actors.

Dr_Con

they've been doing fine with the voice acting, if anything a prospective voice actor can submit a query directly.

Northwold

alternatelder wrote: »

No thank you, because then they'd hire "content creators" and it'd end up cringey voice acting like in Cyberpunk. Just please stick to professional actors.

All other points aside, Cyberpunk has some of the best voice acting I've ever heard, some of the best voice direction, and the cameos are cameos on bit parts. The entire main team of characters except Grimes as Lizzy Wizzy (admittedly truly awful but she's there for her singing), who is only in one quest, is voiced by professional actors. It's not a good comparator to ESO, in that ESO would not win it.

On casting calls more generally, unfortunately acting is very, very competitive. ZOS are a pretty high-budget studio with global reach and an all-character open casting call would be a nightmare to manage. I don't think it's unreasonable at that level for a company to do the standard pre filter of expecting actors to have representation.

If anything, it would be nice to see the quality control on standard of acting and, particularly, standard of voice direction go up. One thinks of Blackwood and the Reach where it was all over the place ("Mine-O-Tower!!! Mine-O-Tower!!!" "Meet me in my village in Vladiglasgow") and regularly immersion killing.

Danikat

You've made several threads about changing voice actors or bringing in new ones. I'm not sure why it bothers you so much but I'm going to say the same thing I said in one of the others:

Regardless of whether they do a public casting call or a contest or whatever the people choosing who gets the roles, which roles they get and giving them direction and doing the editing afterwards will be the same ones now. I assume you don't genuinely think every voice actor they've had so far is bad, but you seem unhappy with the overall result and I think it's highly unlikely that getting some more actors in is going to change that.

My other guess is that you're an aspiring voice actor and want a chance to be in the game but haven't had any luck getting hired through conventional channels so you're looking to persuade ZOS to open it up to unconventional routes because you think that will give you a better chance. If that's the case then it's absolutely fine and a reasonable thing to try, but if you want other players to support you then you need to give us a reason. How does this improve the game or our experience rather than just helping out unknown voice actors who don't have an agent?

alternatelder

Northwold wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

No thank you, because then they'd hire "content creators" and it'd end up cringey voice acting like in Cyberpunk. Just please stick to professional actors.

All other points aside, Cyberpunk has some of the best voice acting I've ever heard, some of the best voice direction, and the cameos are cameos on bit parts. The entire main team of characters except Grimes as Lizzy Wizzy (admittedly truly awful but she's there for her singing), who is only in one quest, is voiced by professional actors. It's not a good comparator to ESO, in that ESO would not win it.

On casting calls more generally, unfortunately acting is very, very competitive. ZOS are a pretty high-budget studio with global reach and an all-character open casting call would be a nightmare to manage. I don't think it's unreasonable at that level for a company to do the standard pre filter of expecting actors to have representation.

If anything, it would be nice to see the quality control on standard of acting and, particularly, standard of voice direction go up. One thinks of Blackwood and the Reach where it was all over the place ("Mine-O-Tower!!! Mine-O-Tower!!!" "Meet me in my village in Vladiglasgow") and regularly immersion killing.

There are 5 others off the top of my head aside from Grimes, and they have over 50 streamers in the game with either full quests or just small lines. Even Keanu's lines are pretty bad, his acting lately has turned into him sounding bored reading transcripts. I'm saying if they put any amateur VAs or youtubers into ESO it'll end up souring the game. ESO has some of, if not the best voice acting of any game I've played, far better than CP77 imo, which to be honest here, is one of the best games I've played.

Northwold

alternatelder wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

No thank you, because then they'd hire "content creators" and it'd end up cringey voice acting like in Cyberpunk. Just please stick to professional actors.

All other points aside, Cyberpunk has some of the best voice acting I've ever heard, some of the best voice direction, and the cameos are cameos on bit parts. The entire main team of characters except Grimes as Lizzy Wizzy (admittedly truly awful but she's there for her singing), who is only in one quest, is voiced by professional actors. It's not a good comparator to ESO, in that ESO would not win it.

On casting calls more generally, unfortunately acting is very, very competitive. ZOS are a pretty high-budget studio with global reach and an all-character open casting call would be a nightmare to manage. I don't think it's unreasonable at that level for a company to do the standard pre filter of expecting actors to have representation.

If anything, it would be nice to see the quality control on standard of acting and, particularly, standard of voice direction go up. One thinks of Blackwood and the Reach where it was all over the place ("Mine-O-Tower!!! Mine-O-Tower!!!" "Meet me in my village in Vladiglasgow") and regularly immersion killing.

There are 5 others off the top of my head aside from Grimes, and they have over 50 streamers in the game with either full quests or just small lines. Even Keanu's lines are pretty bad, his acting lately has turned into him sounding bored reading transcripts. I'm saying if they put any amateur VAs or youtubers into ESO it'll end up souring the game. ESO has some of, if not the best voice acting of any game I've played, far better than CP77 imo, which to be honest here, is one of the best games I've played.

I don't agree with you on ESO (obviously -- and on Reeves, Cyberpunk is the first time I've thought he can act!!), and the Cyberpunk cameos are not the result of an open casting call but of the cameos being famous people, but on a more constructive note I do think ESO could do with stronger voice direction.

The quality of acting itself is jarringly variable, ranging between actual A listers in the base game and A listers of the voice acting world, to people who are noticeably not strong. But even good actors will give very poor performances if they are not given proper direction, most especially in a fictional world with fictional mythology that runs the risk of actors not knowing how to pronounce anything, and not knowing what on earth they're supposed to be talking about, let alone how to emote it. (That an actor didn't know how to pronounce "minotaur" and NO ONE picked it up, even though it's central to the storyline in question, is plain bizarre although recording during the pandemic may have made things difficult.)

And without, apparently, enough for the actors to go on, it's no surprise that performances can vary from hyper-shrill "the world is about to end" readings of lines that are the in-world equivalent of "can I have a cup of coffee", to something like the Anchorite, who sounded like she wanted to evoke the feeling of watching paint dry with a hangover.

To be entirely fair, the recent trend of the writing to exposition dump gibberish certainly doesn't help the actors. You really would need to be A list to make some of that stuff even begin to work (see eg Patrick Stewart, a man famous for taking the most awful dialogue and making it work, spinning the big speech in Oblivion from straw into gold). And if the writing and voice acting teams do not work tightly together, it is going to make any voice direction difficult.

PS One of the biggest problems I have with ESO's acting is that the default accent for much of ESO seems to be a British accent, but half the actors seem completely incapable of doing it, particularly when the part is pushed beyond British English RP and "Mid-Atlantic" English into something more specific. To a British ear, it sounds truly atrocious. So in casting calls it might be an idea to check that people who claim they can do English region X, Scottish lowlands, or whatever, can actually do it rather than taking their word for it.

AnduinTryggva

Bluedog164 wrote: »

I think we need a public casting call for those who do not have agents. Some SAG-AFTRA actors do not have agents and are looking for a new agents. I know of many actors who look for agents to represent them, so why can't we have a public casting call for those in SAG-AFTRA and Ficore? Or even for those who are not a part of the union? Most actors are non-union, so why not make the most of what is currently available on the market? It is my opinion that this would be an amazing resource to have, especially with new websites like SkillsHub, which Jennifer Hale created, and many others that make it easier than ever to post a public casting call from each website. I have been saying that we should have a public casting call for well a year now. Plus it's just my opinion ZOS can do whatever they want. But this is what I would suggest.

Aside that I agree with some of the posts above I wonder what is your motivation behind. Are you an agent for agent-less actors? Please don't get me wrong, it is ok to aks this and I don't blame or attack you on this. I just wondered why somebody would ask that without explaining why the current way of hiring voice actors would be qualitatively less advantageous.

xilfxlegion

honestly the only voice i cannot stand in this game is the one for the volcanic vents

Seminolegirl1992

I love the voice actors they currently have. hell, i'd sell my soul if they continued to hire more of the critical role voice actors. I know we've heard Laura Bailey, Liam, and Travis- but we need more of em. ESO has hired a lot of big name actors and I can understand how that may limit others, but at least the voice acting remains consistent. When they changed Count Verandis' voice actor I could immediately hear how amazing this new guy was- he puts so much emotion into his work.

Tandor

Danikat wrote: »

You've made several threads about changing voice actors or bringing in new ones. I'm not sure why it bothers you so much but I'm going to say the same thing I said in one of the others:

It sounds to me like the OP might be an unemployed voice actor who is between agents...

redlink1979

Bluedog164 wrote: »

I think we need a public casting call (...)

No, we don't.

Bluedog164

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Bluedog164 wrote: »

I think we need a public casting call for those who do not have agents. Some SAG-AFTRA actors do not have agents and are looking for a new agents. I know of many actors who look for agents to represent them, so why can't we have a public casting call for those in SAG-AFTRA and Ficore? Or even for those who are not a part of the union? Most actors are non-union, so why not make the most of what is currently available on the market? It is my opinion that this would be an amazing resource to have, especially with new websites like SkillsHub, which Jennifer Hale created, and many others that make it easier than ever to post a public casting call from each website. I have been saying that we should have a public casting call for well a year now. Plus it's just my opinion ZOS can do whatever they want. But this is what I would suggest.

Aside that I agree with some of the posts above I wonder what is your motivation behind. Are you an agent for agent-less actors? Please don't get me wrong, it is ok to aks this and I don't blame or attack you on this. I just wondered why somebody would ask that without explaining why the current way of hiring voice actors would be qualitatively less advantageous.

I want there to be a way for all actors to be able to get into the game even if they do not have an agent. besides, I am a voice actor myself and I want to be able to enter this game personally as a voice actor. But I also want other actors who do not have an agent to be able to enter the game as voice actors.

Bluedog164

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Bluedog164 wrote: »

I think we need a public casting call for those who do not have agents. Some SAG-AFTRA actors do not have agents and are looking for a new agents. I know of many actors who look for agents to represent them, so why can't we have a public casting call for those in SAG-AFTRA and Ficore? Or even for those who are not a part of the union? Most actors are non-union, so why not make the most of what is currently available on the market? It is my opinion that this would be an amazing resource to have, especially with new websites like SkillsHub, which Jennifer Hale created, and many others that make it easier than ever to post a public casting call from each website. I have been saying that we should have a public casting call for well a year now. Plus it's just my opinion ZOS can do whatever they want. But this is what I would suggest.

Aside that I agree with some of the posts above I wonder what is your motivation behind. Are you an agent for agent-less actors? Please don't get me wrong, it is ok to aks this and I don't blame or attack you on this. I just wondered why somebody would ask that without explaining why the current way of hiring voice actors would be qualitatively less advantageous.

Plus the way that it is currently being done, doesn't allow for a lot of actors to be considered for the part and if more actors are being considered it would bring a lot of diversity into the game and would allow more competition for other actors to be considered for the role that they are wanting to cast. Also, it would bring more opportunity to any actor.

Artim_X

If we were talking about Oblivion sure, but as others have mentioned, ESO does not have a voice actor problem.

Bluedog164

Artim_X wrote: »

If we were talking about Oblivion sure, but as others have mentioned, ESO does not have a voice actor problem.

Well, that’s your opinion. Which is fine

Bluedog164

Tandor wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

You've made several threads about changing voice actors or bringing in new ones. I'm not sure why it bothers you so much but I'm going to say the same thing I said in one of the others:

It sounds to me like the OP might be an unemployed voice actor who is between agents...

Yeah this will help those actors.

AnduinTryggva

Well, it seems that most commentators are fine with the current approach to voice acting in ESO.

While I can understand your motivation I wonder what you want to obtain from posting this in a fan discussion forum. People here are players and will discuss content with you. Maybe some might also want to discuss voice actor recruiting approaches by ZOS. However, I thinnk your attempt might have better chances if you manage to convince ZOS that they will have either an improved product that sells better or that is cheaper to produce or has other advantages.

While we here might have this or that oppinion on your proposition we are probably not in a position to either further or stall your request.

sharquez

It's not a high bar to meet, Just be better than: "Hanu! Nooooo!" in MOS, The single worst line delivery I've heard in the game, in what is otherwise a pretty cool dungeon and story.

Northwold

Bluedog164 wrote: »

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Bluedog164 wrote: »

I think we need a public casting call for those who do not have agents. Some SAG-AFTRA actors do not have agents and are looking for a new agents. I know of many actors who look for agents to represent them, so why can't we have a public casting call for those in SAG-AFTRA and Ficore? Or even for those who are not a part of the union? Most actors are non-union, so why not make the most of what is currently available on the market? It is my opinion that this would be an amazing resource to have, especially with new websites like SkillsHub, which Jennifer Hale created, and many others that make it easier than ever to post a public casting call from each website. I have been saying that we should have a public casting call for well a year now. Plus it's just my opinion ZOS can do whatever they want. But this is what I would suggest.

Aside that I agree with some of the posts above I wonder what is your motivation behind. Are you an agent for agent-less actors? Please don't get me wrong, it is ok to aks this and I don't blame or attack you on this. I just wondered why somebody would ask that without explaining why the current way of hiring voice actors would be qualitatively less advantageous.

Plus the way that it is currently being done, doesn't allow for a lot of actors to be considered for the part and if more actors are being considered it would bring a lot of diversity into the game and would allow more competition for other actors to be considered for the role that they are wanting to cast. Also, it would bring more opportunity to any actor.

The brutal truth is that there are far, far more actors out there than there are jobs, and asking a content producer to do an open casting call is asking them (or their casting agent / voice producer) to get drowned in submissions that they plain don't have the time or the capacity to deal with. Agents serve as the filter.

Assuming you have a good showreel / demo reel, all I can say is keep plugging yourself and don't give up and maybe try with smaller content producers so you can get the first step on the ladder. (If you don't already have a good reel showing your full range, it's become increasingly important.) But it's unlikely that a relatively large and well-established video games producer would go down the open casting call route routinely (they might do for a very specific role or as a novelty, I suppose).

PS I am not an actor but I have worked around media/entertainment production in various guises a lot, and squatted the other side of the audition table.

Bluedog164

Hey @ZOS_Kevin take a look I think that you missed this when you were looking for suggestions.

Rebirthment

Northwold wrote: »

Bluedog164 wrote: »

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

Bluedog164 wrote: »

I think we need a public casting call for those who do not have agents. Some SAG-AFTRA actors do not have agents and are looking for a new agents. I know of many actors who look for agents to represent them, so why can't we have a public casting call for those in SAG-AFTRA and Ficore? Or even for those who are not a part of the union? Most actors are non-union, so why not make the most of what is currently available on the market? It is my opinion that this would be an amazing resource to have, especially with new websites like SkillsHub, which Jennifer Hale created, and many others that make it easier than ever to post a public casting call from each website. I have been saying that we should have a public casting call for well a year now. Plus it's just my opinion ZOS can do whatever they want. But this is what I would suggest.

Aside that I agree with some of the posts above I wonder what is your motivation behind. Are you an agent for agent-less actors? Please don't get me wrong, it is ok to aks this and I don't blame or attack you on this. I just wondered why somebody would ask that without explaining why the current way of hiring voice actors would be qualitatively less advantageous.

Plus the way that it is currently being done, doesn't allow for a lot of actors to be considered for the part and if more actors are being considered it would bring a lot of diversity into the game and would allow more competition for other actors to be considered for the role that they are wanting to cast. Also, it would bring more opportunity to any actor.

The brutal truth is that there are far, far more actors out there than there are jobs, and asking a content producer to do an open casting call is asking them (or their casting agent / voice producer) to get drowned in submissions that they plain don't have the time or the capacity to deal with. Agents serve as the filter.

Assuming you have a good showreel / demo reel, all I can say is keep plugging yourself and don't give up and maybe try with smaller content producers so you can get the first step on the ladder. (If you don't already have a good reel showing your full range, it's become increasingly important.) But it's unlikely that a relatively large and well-established video games producer would go down the open casting call route routinely (they might do for a very specific role or as a novelty, I suppose).

PS I am not an actor but I have worked around media/entertainment production in various guises a lot, and squatted the other side of the audition table.

This so much! No offense but OP is coming off as arrogant in creating this thread because one of the reasons is they want their voice to be in game. Like dude there are many of us who would love to voice an NPC as well but they are going the wrong way by doing this.

Kirawolfe

xilfxlegion wrote: »

honestly the only voice i cannot stand in this game is the one for the volcanic vents

At least she's sealed that fissure for good.

... oh wait

Bluedog164

Hopefully, a response to this will be here soon from ZOS, it's been a month since I made this suggestion, but I still believe that a public casting call, might help with people who are in between agents or those who are not part of the union.

the1andonlyskwex

Unless actors from a public casting call are significantly cheaper than the alternative, I just don't see the benefit for ESO or ZOS here. It's not like the current process is producing unsatisfactory results.

A public casting call sounds like a lot of work without much payoff. Casting through agents is an effective way to weed out incompetents (and other troublemakers) without having to hire a huge team of people to sort through amateur submissions (99.9% of which are probably garbage).

Daiyanae

I think it would be cool if they had a contest and selected one or more of our actual players to voice something.

Bluedog164

Daiyanae wrote: »

I think it would be cool if they had a contest and selected one or more of our actual players to voice something.

Thank you, Daiyanae. You just made my day