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:That's all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. I'm sure they're pinching their pennies so that they can properly reward their programming team. Like all the other giant game companies. That savings will definitely end up in the pockets of the little guy.

How Much is Enough?

[BandwidthHog]

Interesting timing. I'm currently about halfway through cleaning up and chopping into bits the product of two four hour voiceover sessions. It is amazing how much of a difference good voiceover talent can make. Our primary female voice talent (we alternate between male and female voices throughout each lesson) is a local morning DJ who is simply awesome. It is just astounding what she can get right on a single take, and we deal with some rather technical tongue-twisters with all sorts of little-known jargon. In general, these people don't get paid well enough (although the male whose work I am attempting to salvage was paid entirely too much, seeing as how he can’t correctly pronounce the word “oxygen”).

But as to the yawning chasm between the wages of on-camera and voiceover talent, are the vocal artists paid too little or are the folks with the perfect teeth paid too much? I lean toward the latter. I’m not saying Sean Connery shouldn’t make more than I do, but should he make fifty times what I do? Five hundred? Ten thousand times my salary? (And before you respond with something involving the words “what the market will bear,” look at everything going on with Hollywood and see how well the market seems to be bearing such cost structures.)

half the time, eh? (not the accurate quote, btw)

[Headcase88]

"I did the voice acting for Road Runner"

"you mean 'Meep, meep'?"

"Actually they just paid for one 'meep' and doubled it up on the soundtrack. Cheap bastards."

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