Pixelkin: Hi, my name is Simone from Pixelkin.org. A few weeks ago, I got a chance to interview D.C. Douglas. He’s a man of many talents – he’s been in films, on television, and he’s done a lot of voice acting. Video game fans will know him as Legion from “Mass Effect 2” and “3” and also as Albert Wesker from the “Resident Evil” series. A lot of young people really consider going into the video game industry, whether that means as a programmer, a game designer, an artist or an actor. I wanted to shed a little light on the acting side of things and find out just what it takes to do voice acting in video games. I am here with you D.C. Douglas. I thought I’d ask you today about your voice acting work, focusing specifically on video games. I’d like you to clarify, you know, what goes into voice acting in video games and also talk a little bit about your own career. If you want to introduce yourself…
D.C. Douglas: Well, I certainly didn’t want to create more competition for myself, so I want to dissuade everybody from thinking of having a voice over career. So that’s all I ask. Well, I’m D.C. Douglas. I’ve been an actor for about 30 years in LA, but I do film, television, and then I also do voice over. You usually can work a lot more in voice over, but nobody tends to know half the stuff you do. Like, if you just do one TV show on network television that year, everyone’s like, “Wow, you’re really…” But you do like, you work a gig every other day doing a commercial or something for voice over, nobody really has any idea that you have a career going. But that’s how a lot of us kind of make the mortgage and that kind of thing.
In the 90s, it was a little weird because it was very hard to break in then because again, nothing was digital. I joined a loop group, which is, if you ever see a TV show or a movie and there’s people talking – the actors are talking and then there’s people in the background talking – those people actually aren’t talking, and you probably know this, but just for other people, we fill in those voices for them later on in post. Or like, “Soldier number three screaming as he dies in the battle,” and that kind of thing. Which is kind of like a prelude to doing video games later on.
Then in 2000, I got a call through a referral to come do the voice of the Master, to voice match an actor who did the Master in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” And I went, “Oh, for what, like I thought it was for the movie or something or cartoon?” It’s like, “It’s a video game.” I’m like, “Oh, all right.” And that was still during the time when everyone was like, the voice acting, they didn’t care. They really didn’t care, which is I think how I got lucky and got the gig. We recorded it literally in like 20 minutes. The actor didn’t want to do it because it’s like, “It’s a video game. Why do I want to do a video game?” You know, flash forward 10 years and see how people feel about it.
That was my first video game. I ended up getting a good agent like the following year or two later, and then just things started rocking and rolling. I did promos for CBS daytime, and then I started booking more video games and some anime video games. And then my big break for video games where I got like a following was, I did “Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles” playing Albert Wesker, which is a really big villain to this fandom. I had no idea it was a huge fandom. I kept starting getting these random people wanting to befriend me on Facebook and I’m like, “Who are you people?” And then I finally got it, I started a fan page, thought I better start diverting everybody.
And then from there, I came back and I did “Resident Evil 5”, which turned out to be his big opus, and then I just skyrocketed with me within this fandom. And then simultaneously, I booked Legion on “Mass Effect 2”, and then which led to “Mass Effect 3.” But that has its own huge fandom as well, so…
Pixelkin: They know you from actually… It’s fascinating.
D.C. Douglas: Yeah, oh cool. And then again, how these things kind of get connected – on “Mass Effect 2”, I was directed by Ginny McSwain, who ended up casting the voices for “Transformers: Rescue Bots” on the Hub. And that’s how I ended up basically, she put me to the head of the line when I sent my audition in, because she knows me, put me to the head of the line to do Chase the police bot on that one. And so I’ve done three seasons of that cartoon as well right now, actually.
Thinking of the audience of your website – I’m in two commercials out there for Experian, a credit company, where we’re these two computers that are “the other guys” and how we’re horrible to people. My voice is one of the computers, and the other guy is Tom Kenny, who’s the voice of SpongeBob. So yeah, kind of very funny trivia – when you finally know who these voices are, you got Albert Wesker or Legion (Legion actually is more appropriate for a computer), and you get SpongeBob, you know, playing bad guys.
Pixelkin: Do you more enjoy being horrible characters like that, or do you enjoy someone like Legion that’s more complex and actually eventually relatable despite the fact that he’s a non-human character?
D.C. Douglas: I enjoy the paycheck. You know, seriously though, it’s about work. It’s like it’s so hard to get work, so when you get it, you’re just happy whatever it is, usually. Every now and then there’s that job you’re like, “Uh, I don’t really want to go in for ‘Soldier number three’ on, you know, whatever the war game is – I can’t even think of what it is, ‘SOCOM 38’ or whatever.” I’d rather be a major character in those now. That’s kind of how the career is going.
But otherwise, no, all good guy, bad guy – bad guys are always much more fun. Legion was fascinating in that, especially when you compare “Resident Evil” acting style with the “Mass Effect” acting style. They wanted it very cinematic for “Mass Effect”, and so that was nice, is that everything could just be much more natural and emotive and within a contained way. Whereas “Resident Evil”, I mean, even the dialogue is so out there and it’s like, just chewing the scenery, it’s like they want chewing the scenery. So it’s a bit of just kind of over-the-top acting stuff. I mean, they brought it back down for “Resident Evil 6”, and they might – who knows, they’ll probably… I think all video games are moving in that direction, unless they’re purposefully stylized as you would a film.
But that’s the beauty of it, is finally there is, you know, there’s respect for the voice acting of it, because it’s become more sophisticated, just as the visuals have become sophisticated. So yeah, I enjoy both, but Legion was easy because it was my own voice. I just had to clear my throat and then go in and then just be real. Whereas Albert Wesker, I was taking over the role from two other actors who kind of made an imprint on it, so I had to combine their qualities and then try to put my own thing on it. Plus, the character was evolving, plus we were doing facial motion capture, so they had dots all over my face, lasers pointed at me, and I couldn’t move my head. In voice over usually we’re doing all sorts of stuff like this [gestures], but in that I had to like, do it underneath the camera. So yeah, it was a little…
Pixelkin: You mentioned things getting digital, so you’re not, you know, carrying around a cassette tape anymore. What else is different since the early days to now?
D.C. Douglas: Well yeah, that was a big part of it – the digital. In other words, it used to be that I’d have to go into my agents to every day almost, and if it was for one piece of copy where I said one line on a radio spot (which pays the least of these), or it was to go in and I’d have 20 pages of copy and I’d spend like a whole morning there. But it was like, almost every other day going to your agents. And if the agent lives close, great, but if you know, a lot of people, they had to trek, you know, far.
And then I think I was one of the first people – they let me do the home studio. I started my home studio in 2002, and not many people were doing it then. I had been an editor, an Avid editor, as a survival gig. And so when I… so I kind of learned all the tech side that way. And then when I decided to try to make all my money from acting by starting a home studio, I had all this free time to figure out how to put together my Pro Tools, my booth, and all of that. It’s kind of funny – my setup was done in 2002. I’ve moved since then, but I have not touched a dial. I keep everything exactly the same because I’ve forgotten what it is that it all means now. So enough.
But the beauty is now, is like for instance, in fact last night, a fellow actor, a really wonderful guy, Michael Bell, who is from the original “Transformers”, Gen 1 and all that – we did Texas Comicon together. Anyway, sweet guy. He referred me to a casting director I’ve never met, and she, because she was in need of something immediately to sound like this Disney announcer. And so she sent, so he she sent him an email, he forwarded my stuff to her but told me about it in email. I see all this last night at 10 o’clock. I’m able to come in first thing in the morning, send her an audition, she’s got the audition file within a half hour of that, you know. And that would have taken, that would have been a nightmare if it was before digital, because it would be phone calls late at night, people going, and you’re like, “Who the hell is calling me at 11 o’clock at night?” And then the next day, you know, running all over LA to find that studio to go in just to do an audition, not get paid, you just spend all that time and gas, and then go on your way. But this was so easy, you know, so it’s a beautiful evolution to the business.
Pixelkin: And it sounds like it’s just as brutal voice acting as it is to be acting on camera.
D.C. Douglas: Oh, shocker! You know, no, I’m not gonna go that far. It’s not that easy, certainly, especially in cartoons where they have to have so many different voices. But that’s fun, creative work. You don’t have to dress up or anything, you just go into the studio and do that. And again, you’re only working for, you know, at most four hours. It’s very rare you go into a session for eight hours, unless you’re the lead and they’re in a time crunch. You’re never working more than four hours.
Whereas on camera, like for instance, I was just in “Sharknado 2”. And I only did six hours on that because, and again that’s low budget, so they crammed a lot in. But I’m like, “I have waders on, I’m rock walking on slippery rocks.” On the first take, I slipped a little so I had water in my waders, which makes them very heavy at that point. And then I have to run from an imaginary crocodile, five takes in a row. And that’s, you know, thank God I’m in shape, but I was like, that was exhausting. And I would say, was that harder than doing voice over? Absolutely. But I’ll also say, and other people will disagree with me, because it all depends on where you are in your career I guess, or who you are as a person. But I love acting with my eyes and facial expression, and you can’t do that in voice over – it’s all with the voice. So I always get much more reward out of acting on camera.
Pixelkin: So is, you’ve talked about it a little bit, but is being in a film like “Sharknado” as much fun as it looks?
D.C. Douglas: In the long run, it’s more fun to say I was in it, after doing it, than like while you’re doing it. I mean, you know it’s going to be fun while you’re doing it, but it’s, I mean, that was shot in Buffalo in winter, and we were in water. So freezing water.
So by the end of the evening, when it’s really cold and my clothes are soaked, my socks are soaked, and then I’ve got blood and guts on me – it’s a shot they didn’t use anyway. But at one point there was a shot where it supposedly chomps down on me, and then stuff flies in my face. So they had this compressor thing that went, all this stuff on me, and then we had to do this reaction shots with it. And now I’ve got, I’ve got like this goo on me that’s getting cold and getting colder because it’s so cold outside, you know. And I would say in that moment, I’m freezing, I’m covered with goo, and I’m like going, “I can’t wait to get to my hotel.” I was ready for that shoot, for that day to be over at that point.
But yeah, the minute I was done, it was like, I giggled when I was having my dinner that night. I was like going, “I’m in ‘Sharknado 2’!” A silly film, but you know, I’ve worked with Asylum on many films. The guys who run that are wonderful. I mean, they have a business model and some people can make fun of them for that business model – they’re laughing their way to the bank. But they’re also really good people, and they’re honest, and I just love with them.
But what was beautiful is it looks like I didn’t die in “Sharknado 2”. It technically, you could say I did, but I emailed them and I said, “You know, my fans are saying it doesn’t look like I died. So ‘Sharknado 3’, I’m just saying!”
Pixelkin: Excellent. Yeah, would you say is it easier to get into voice acting compared to film acting, or is that a trap?
D.C. Douglas: A trap! There’s… Well, it’s a trap to want to be an actor. It’s a trap not to have a backup. And then like, then you have to do it through your whole life, otherwise I would have been doing something else by now. There were several points I wanted to give up.
Is it easier? Here, I want to say that, I mean, if you’ve got… Uh, no, I will say this – this is going to sound so weird. You could – there’s always some kind of voice over you can be doing if you’re in LA or New York. There’s always some voice over you can be doing. You can be doing some corporate medical narration and be doing that like once a week. You can be doing people’s voicemails. There’s always something to be done voice over-wise and make money at it.
Acting-wise, you can do theater, but unless you’re in New York or doing regional, there’s no money to be made in theater at all. And so to get on film or television where you’re making money, that’s much harder, I think, absolutely. So if you look at my resume, it’s like, I mean, it looks like I’ve done a lot. But when you look at the years and you kind of stretch it over timeline, you go, “That’s like, you know, he works three on-camera gigs a year, or four maybe if he’s lucky.” One year I did 11, and that was like, “I don’t know what happened that year!” But you know, there’s years I’ve gone where I’ve not done one thing. And you know, but I’ve auditioned and all of that.
It’s much harder on camera, I think, whereas during that year, obviously, I still made my bills because I was doing voice over and had commercials running and things like that. Yeah.
Pixelkin: What made you stick with it after all that time?
D.C. Douglas: Well, like I said, I didn’t have a backup. First off, I love it enough that I stayed with it. And also, I put so much time into it by the time I started to think, “This is so hard,” I was… When it first, the first time it hit, I was around 34. But I’ve been here since I was 19. There are casting directors who know me. You know, I’m getting into an age range that I can probably get more work. And it’s like, so part of me wants to leave, the other part is like, “You just give it another year, give it a couple more years,” or whatever.
At 38, I wanted to do it as well, I wanted to leave. It was like, either I’m gonna leave this, or I have to fully commit. And that’s when I left my survival gig and started a home studio. I have to give Laura Kaine, she’s a voice over artist, I have to give her credit for inspiring me, because she had her own home studio. She did a lot of what they call – I can’t even think of what they call them now because I don’t do any of them – they’re for radio stations, they do their bumper stingers and things like that. There’s an actual phrase that they call that, oh it’s on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, she does that kind of work, a lot of that.
And so she had this home studio and she told me about that. I thought, “Well, I could broaden that as well and try to, you know, get other kinds of work.” And figured it out. And so, yeah, so I’ve got like a voice over service through my website, DCDouglas.com, that kind of supplements, you know, income. And then I’ve got the in-town with my agents, the bigger stuff that I get through them – the film and TV, or the radio, TV commercial, and video games. And then now the cartoons.
Pixelkin: So is it necessary for a voice actor to be that flexible and that diverse?
D.C. Douglas: The more you can do as an actor, the better off you’re gonna be. If you can do voice over, if you can do… And also theater, singing, performing – as long as you’ve got all these other abilities, you can find ways to cobble together a living doing it.
I do these conventions, these video game conventions now. I do love meeting fans, but they pay us to go to these things. So again, that’s another way of augmenting our income. I mean, it’s kind of the dirty little secret, but it’s the truth about an actor – you’re always looking for your next job. So…
Pixelkin: Yeah, is it possible to specifically make a career in video games, or does it absolutely need to be broader?
D.C. Douglas: You can, if you’re gonna… If you reduce your overhead to nothing. Because there are no residuals with video games. If you work just for wages, you can’t get ahead. But if you’re… Passive income – actors, when you get a commercial, you get a cartoon, you have residuals that come. This is what our union has done years ago that has helped us out, so that we can have a career, we can have those down weeks or months where we don’t get anything and still eke by, you know, have our macaroni and cheese, still be able to pay our rent and all of that, before we get our next gig. Because these little checks will come in every now and then.
With video games, they have not negotiated any residuals. And you know, there’s arguments on both sides as to why and why not and all of that. But so, but so many fans when I go to these conventions, they go, “I want a career…” And what they’re really asking is, “I want to just make a career in video games,” or “I just want to make a career in anime.” And you… There’s just, unless you have the littlest, you know, budget every month, you can’t do that. Because you’re only getting paid for that hour, and that’s it.
And there’s only so many games, and they tend to work with the same people that they know. So if you’re coming into it, you’re gonna have many lean years, you know. You’re gonna have to work a survival job in order to do it. That’s why if you broaden out and you go, “You know, you can do medical narration, right? You can learn how to say ‘arthroscopic’ – behold, you can do an audition job!”
Pixelkin: So when you did the “Mass Effect” games, how long did it take you to do each game?
D.C. Douglas: It’s usually, I mean, it’s always dependent on how much dialogue you have and whatnot. And Legion’s actually not that big in those games – important, but not that big. “Mass Effect 2”, I think I did… I’m gonna say I did five sessions for “Mass Effect 2”. So that was five four-hour sessions. “Mass Effect 3” went a bit faster, and I think it’s just they were a little more under the gun on that one.
And that one was actually more complicated because I was doing three characters, essentially. I was doing Legion if you let me live in “Mass Effect 2”, I was doing Legion had you not – if you didn’t save me. So it was a new Legion you met. And then there was neutral Legion, which could be – the lines could be used for either scenario. So we… So we do every scene twice, you know, and then sometimes three times depending. So that was fascinating.
But yeah, so that was pretty… Whereas “Resident Evil 5”, doing Albert Wesker, because of the motion capture and all that, that was a whole summer. I mean, I must have gone in there like eight, nine times to do that. So…
Then I did, I know no one watches this game, but I’m so proud of my work in it – was “NBA 2K14”, which is a sports game. Nobody… It’s like the sports guys just want to know about the sports. But there’s a whole story you can play, the “My Player” story. And I’m the uber agent that you can get to if you want, if you choose me. And I come on, I really try to woo you, and then once you have me, I become a whole other guy.
But the beauty of that, that was full motion capture and voice over mapped everything. And the other beauty of it was, because again, it’s not… There’s no cutscenes or things, it’s like theater in the round in a closeup, but it’s all digital. So they can move us wherever they need to do it if they want. And we were able to improv our lines – like we had a dialogue, he goes… So we’d learn the dialogue and then we’d improv a little bit. And like, whatever he liked, he would, he’d keep. And so it was the most fun experience I ever had.
And that was literally 33 pages of dialogue and shot in two days. So… But that was two eight-hour days. Yeah.
Pixelkin: But it was so fun. I know in film, a page is equivalent to, is it about a minute of screen time? Is it the same for voice acting?
D.C. Douglas: Oh, it all depends. Because a lot of times it’s… I mean, if we’re talking about video games, it’s a little confusing because it comes as like an Excel sheet. And sometimes it has the, it has the scene, sometimes it’s just the previous line that’s feeding you. A lot of times it’s just all your lines.
Which is why the voice acting was so bad in the 90s, because most of the time, the coders just said, “We need it like this,” you know, and they’d give them the stuff. And then the director’s like, “I know your character is this, but I really don’t know what you’re doing here. Let’s do it three ways – mad, sort of mad, not mad.” That’s how you do. So you get some really awkward acting in that kind of stuff.
But these days, there’s so much better about it. At least they’ll have like a synopsis of what the scene’s about, and then you can kind of get the gist of what the dialogue is as you go through it. And much more attention is put to the acting style.
But again, it all depends on how they give you that script. So there have been times when you’ve had absolutely no context going into a scene.
D.C. Douglas: Oh yeah, many times. And again, like most of the anime ones, I had no context. Sometimes I listen to some of the games I did and I’m like going, “Oh, that’s what I did. That was my character?” I had no idea. But again, like I say, with the bigger games, bigger budgets, they’re much more attentive to detail. And again, they’re all moving towards a cinematic way of directing people.
So I was on your website the other day and I noticed you do have a lot of advice there for voice actors starting out. Is there one particular piece of advice that you would give to someone?
D.C. Douglas: I mean, again, it’s… It’s funny, as one of these conventions, they did, they threw in this panel called “D.C. Douglas and How to Be a Hollywood Actor”, and I go, “You really don’t want me doing that one, because…” He’s like, “Well, come to LA and wait 40 years.”
But what’s funny is when I talk to those people in the audience, again, it’s like… And I’ll be in like some place like in Indiana or something, and they want to be voice actors, but they don’t want to leave the town. And it’s like, “Well, you know, you have very limited abilities of what you’re gonna be able to do here. You can, you know, maybe do local commercials or something like that. But you’re not gonna have a video game career, you can’t do it from your bedroom.” You have to, you know, you can create games with friends, but you’re not going to make a living that way. You need to go to the hubs.
So, but my advice would be, if somebody’s really serious about it, like they, like in their heart, they have to do it – one is, go to be an actor, not to be a video game voice actor, not just to be one of those things. You know, that can be your dream, and that can be the thing that you try to focus on, but be an actor for all of it.
And that being the case, and especially with emphasis for voice over, I would say take an acting class for six months. Because you’ve got to learn what it is to be an actor. Again, some people can just walk in and do it, they’ve got a natural talent for it. But why not, if you’ve got, if you can get the money and you’ve got the time, why not be the best you can? To take an acting class for six months.
I would take an improv class, I would take a singing class. And once you’ve done those, then go and take an act… Like, you’re in LA, then go to one of the voice over classes, because they all have their own way of doing it. But if you have all that as a basis, you can kind of see who’s BS-ing you, who’s got more truth to what they’re teaching you, and you find your own way.
And the whole point is to become an independent actor. Because you’re going to get directed so many different ways, depending on every project you go on, or film or TV show. Or film and TV, they won’t even direct you – you know, they cast you because they think you could do the job, they’re too busy working with, you know, bigger picture. So you just got to know what you’re doing. And just when they say, “Hey, can you just, uh, put a hitch there? Or slow it down right over there? Or make sure you just turn left of the thing? Thanks.” And they won’t even say good job or bad job, you have no idea. And, but if you’re self-directing, then you know what it is, and you can only self-direct when you fully understand your craft, your tool, and in your mind. So…
Pixelkin: So is that good?
D.C. Douglas: Yeah, that was advice. I think my favorite piece of advice from that page was “talk to yourself all the time”, and…
D.C. Douglas: Oh, right, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s funny how people like, they don’t get… They don’t like the sound of their voice either. They want to do voice, but they don’t like the sound of their voice. But it’s so… Steve, I work with Steve Blum, who a lot of people know, on “Rescue Bots”. And he does it, he does the old Gary Owens thing where he has his [cupped hand gesture], like this, so that he can hear how he sounds. Because that’s the thing – we only hear, we don’t know what our voice really sounds like when we just talk like this. We know what it sounds like muffled by bone and muscle, and how it’s reverberating in our ear, we’re getting a two-tone thing going on with our voices. We don’t have a true experience of voice.
That’s why when, some… You record, you play it back on tape… Think about when I was a kid, yeah, you’re like, you’re horrified, because you’re like, “Who…?” Because, well, you got ego trapped in there and all that, and it’s… It is your voice. And once you get the ego out of there, and your insecurities out, you listen to it, you go, “Oh, okay. Now this is how I can change or alter the voice,” you know, to please people or not please people.
Pixelkin: Right, and having the consistency, I guess, that comes with doing a voice completely different from your own. Do you have to speak in that voice for a long time before that consistency comes, or is it just…?
D.C. Douglas: I’m probably not the best actor to ask that of, because I’ve been lucky enough that the majority of my characters, because I’m low-voiced, they always tend to be similar voices, because they’re not… They don’t… I’m not getting pushed, nor am I looking to be pushed. I’m always looking for the easy job. I always tell people, like, “I don’t have a career, I’m a hack.”
But when I’m doing… But I will say this, for on-camera stuff, my characters usually always start with the voice. I’m about to go do a movie for three weeks in Houston, and it’s a very unusual character. And he’s got a… And I’m, for me, it starts with the voice. It’s…
So I, but do I… I play around with it and whatnot, but I don’t talk… I’m not doing a whole method thing, and like, being… Who’s the greatest actor that’s out there right now, who’s…? What’s his name? Played Lincoln. I’m…
Pixelkin: Oh, Daniel Day-Lewis.
D.C. Douglas: Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s like, I’m… God, he’s wonder. But he also has the freedom to be able to do that, and just, and be that all day long, every day.
Pixelkin: And not be called weird for it.
D.C. Douglas: No, exactly. Exactly. No, he’s an artist. Which is, you know, whatever works for whoever, you know. There are other people that will be joking all the way up until they say “action”, you know. I think Jack Lemmon was a wonderful actor, and he was, you know, he’s the kind of guy who literally the minute they cut, cut, he was like going on about something that happened the other day.
But for, for like cartoons and that kind of stuff, especially when it’s really different, you have to develop it and know… A lot of them will like, have recordings of their voices that they created, just to remind themselves, “How did I do that voice?” I mean, some of these guys get into it where they’re like, putting… They’re sticking their fingers in their mouths in certain ways and all that, just to create all different sounds. It’s, you have to play like a child in order to find these things. And then you have to remember how you did them when it’s the time for that voice.
So, but I think, no, I think when you’re doing the job, once you have the voice, you kind of have it. Before you go in, you run it in the car on the way there. They’ll play a sample, and that’s the other thing too, is actors are usually very good mimics. So once they play a sample of what you did…
Like, I’ll go to a job and I didn’t know – and this is even with like commercials, because we don’t just say everything the same way, same voice style in a commercial. I’ll have the, I’ll have the gruff guy who’s got the hardware store, who’s gonna talk down a little bit like this, you know. Then you have like the regular guy who’s talking, you know, who’s got maybe a little bit of attitude, slightly pinched nasal, you know. But so you change it for whatever the commercial is.
But then you do like, you know, 20 auditions a week, more if you’ve got a better agent or something. Or you’re like more… And, but then so you forget. It’s like toilet paper, you know. You… Oh, sorry, this is a family thing. It’s like a lottery ticket – you get it and you rub it off, and then you forget about it.
And then all of a sudden you get booked, you’re like, “What is that?” And they go, “It’s this,” or whatever. You have no idea. You walk into the studio, go, “Okay, D.C., here’s the copy.” You look at the copy, you go, “Well, this is what I might do. I might do a Don Pardo with it. But I’m not sure if that’s what I sent you guys.” And go, “Here’s the sample.”
They’ll play the sample, then it’s like, “No, I was talking like this the entire time. Oh, all right.” But the minute they play it, you key right into it, you know. And then you can do the same thing with like a voice match or something, and they go, “Here’s the voice that was before. We want it like that, but now dial it a little bit this way or that way.” And you adjust in the moment. That’s why taking singing classes, improv classes, all these things get you to work, to be able to control your tool easily and to change on a dime when they need it. And the director will say, “You’re kind of getting a little too out of range, so we’ll push you back into range,” or whatever. Yeah, so that’s kind of how that works.
Pixelkin: That is really cool to know that you can just bounce back and forth like that at will.
D.C. Douglas: You can do that too. I’m not as good as some people who can like, kind of switch into an entire radio play with themselves. I can’t… I like, I need to like take a moment and switch. So I can switch to another voice, I can’t just like go, “How are you doing, Frank?” “Well, I’m doing great, Bob.” I can’t like… I’ll do that for, I can do it right there for two lines, and that’s it. After that, I need to take a break in between to again know where there’s the voice again. Boom.
Pixelkin: So what was your favorite game project that you worked on, specific little video game project?
D.C. Douglas: Well, you know, you love them all for different reasons, right? So I mean, I love “Mass Effect” because it was so simple and real, and then also it was a very touching ending, both times, all endings. “Resident Evil”, only because of what it brought me. I mean, I have to credit that game for like, really putting me on the map.
But then I’d have to say the most rewarding performance-wise was doing “NBA 2K14” that nobody cares about. I mean, nobody… If the crowd that follows me cares about… You know, there’s the sports people, they love it, it’s a huge game. But they don’t really follow the theatrical stories as much.
But for me, it was the most rewarding acting experience, being able to combine the voice over and the on-camera acting together. And even though they made me look like a melting Bill Pullman for my avatar, I’m still like, I got all excited. They’re taking the pictures of me and everything, and I’m like going, “I get to see what I look like in the video game!” And I see it, I’m like going, “I’m sweaty, I’m melting, I’m really tired.”
Pixelkin: Yeah, if you get a chance, you should go back to my website, into the video games. It’s one of the first videos there, it’s “NBA 2K”, and just take a look at what… How they made me look. It’s pretty funny.
I think actually that pretty much covers it. I had a really good time talking to you. Thank you. I don’t know how to wrap up.
D.C. Douglas: Well, if there’s any… I’ll just run a couple things. I am more of a 17 and over kind of guy online. But if you want, you can follow me on Twitter, @DC_Douglas. And also DCDouglas.com has got all of my stuff on it. And then I’m on Facebook as well for bigger stories and stuff.
And then those who are “Resident Evil” fans who happen to be watching this, if you don’t know yet, I’m in a movie called “Apocalypse Kiss” that was produced by fans of “Resident Evil. Do you know about this?
Pixelkin: Oh, you didn’t… Oh, it’s cool.
D.C. Douglas: Well, it’s… There’s no Legion in it. But they were a big fan of “Resident Evil”, so we made the character look a lot like Albert Wesker. So he’s got the slicked-back blonde hair and all of that. And it’s a very cool looking film. So, and I have a very fun role as a serial killer in that. And that’s a… You can watch that streaming now through a whole bunch of different video on demand services. So yeah.
And then look for “Kild TV” coming out next year sometime, where I’m… I’m actually the lead in that one. So I’m off to shoot that. It’s a very… It’s a classic horror film, so that should be fun.
Pixelkin: Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. It was lovely meeting you too. And have a beautiful evening.
D.C. Douglas: Have a good night. Bye-bye.
Pixelkin: Bye.
