Cortana Works For Scale Wages

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting on local theater folks who do voice-work in videogames. One of the article's examples is that of Jen Taylor, who plays the voice of Master Chief's synthetic partner in crime, the AI Cortana. From the article: "Cortana, an artificial intelligence that is pretty much in charge of things in 'Halo' 1 and 2, is played by Book-It Repertory Theatre regular Jen Taylor. Cortana, of course, is a necessary factor in 'Halo 3,' which is in the process of development. Taylor is in Australia working in a Seattle Children's Theatre co-production ... A recurring role commands extra money. For 'Halo 1' Taylor got about $500 for a four-hour session. For 'Halo 2' she got twice that. "But the technicians had gotten so good at what they were doing," Taylor notes with some regret, 'that they got twice the amount of work done in half the time. So my actual pay was about the same.' When actors do voiceover work, they are represented by AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists). The union contract stipulates a fee of $600 for most four-hour recording sessions."

Comments

Re:Ah, technicians

[Random Destruction]

Hello DrMrLordX, My name is Dr Sbaitso.

I am here to help you.
Say whatever is in your mind freely,
our conversation will be kept in strictconfidence.
Memory contents will be wiped off after you leave,

So, tell me about your problems.

Re:That's all?

[el_womble]

This is how economics works. Something is only worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it.

You may think that her vocal talent was worth more, but her fee represents two things:

- Bungie were more than happy to use a different actor should they need to but were polite enough to ask her to repeat the performance.
- The actor believes that she was fairly compensated as nobody forced her to take the job. She may have wanted more (don't we all?) but she understood the weakness of her bargaining power.

If you feel that she deserved more money, maybe you could hire her yourself? Get a group of your friends together and contact her agent and offer her a gig - just think of the cool ring tones you could get for just a $500.

Personally I think $500 to $1000 is more than adequate for what was essentially half a days work. The programmers wouldn't have been on anything like that rate, nor would the script writers or the technitions. As an owner of Halo 1 and 2 I can say with some confidence that if the voice of Cortana, Master Chief or in fact any of the voices my reaction would have been similar to when I realised the the covenant would be speaking English and not their own languages throughout Halo 2, regardless of difficulty: "Hey, thats lame. Oh well", and then keep on playing. I don't think I'm alone.

Of all the people on the pay role at Bungie, why would you think that its the voice actors that need more compensation?

Re:$125/hour -- quit yer bitching

[C0rinthian]

Good luck getting 40 hours a week of paid work as a voice-actor, let alone 100. Saying '$125/hr' is VERY misleading, as she very possibly didn't have any other gigs that week.

Performance work is VERY inconsistent, and the big numbers aren't so big when you look at it over time.

Cortana is hot in real life!

[HellBat]

I figured all videogame voice talent would be normal Joes and Janes that work for the companies, but I guess it stands to reason that they would use real actors in the a-list titles. But after RTFA I think I've suddenly started to like Cortana a lot more...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20061023/450v oice_over_jen_taylor_06.jpg