Zach Hanks, professional voice actor for many well-known AAA titles, such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Final Fantasy XIII, and Battleborn, started his VO (Voice-Over) career almost 20 years ago. Since then, Mr. Hanks has not only become an expert in his field, but also an advisor to newcomers through his mentorship program; The VO Career Launch pad.
Recently, we had the opportunity to ask Mr. Hanks about his extraordinary career as well as what it’s really like behind the scenes when voicing a AAA game.
Here’s what this VO pro had to say.
How did you get started with voice acting?
I was an actor by training and trade already, with a voice and speech speciality and a little experience with college radio. As a kid, I loved cartoons and video games, and was an avid Dungeons & Dragons gamer (WAY before it was cool), so I had some familiarity with character voices and the settings and tropes we see in games and animation.
But my real introduction to the VO “industry” was almost 20 years ago, which consisted of a week temping for Disney Character Voices International, followed by a month or so temping for Disney Television Animation, where I met many of the big names in cartoon voices at a recording facility called LA Studios.
Then, almost half a decade later, I was hired as a production manager for a company that specialized in game Voice-Over, and for two years I got to direct and cast game voice actors, and get to know the L.A. game, VO community and talent agents. I went back to acting in the spring of 2007 by way of Voice-Over, and within a few months I’d booked an advertising campaign and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Can you walk us through the process of recording a voice for a AAA title character?
I’ll get a call from my agent that I’ve booked a session for a new game, and they pass along the day, time, and studio info. I warm up my voice in the car on the commute, and when I arrive, I grab some water or coffee or a snack and basically wait until they’re ready for me.
There’s usually a little chit-chat with the director, writer, engineer, etc., and then I head into the booth. Now at this point, it is entirely possible that I still have no idea what title I’m working on, or what character(s) I’m going to voice. This is also likely the first time I’ve seen a script since the audition. (There’s a lot of confidentiality in game production, and I could wallpaper my house with all the non-disclosure agreements I’ve signed).
Once the session starts, the folks in the control room and I discuss what they need in terms of performance and the characteristics of each character’s vocal and speech patterns. I then read some lines, we craft it a bit until it’s what they’re looking for, they let me know what the circumstances are that the character is encountering, and we lay it down, line by line.
It’s common to come in with no real info or preparation, to put it all together in a short time, and just begin. Often, the character’s voice is very similar to my own, with very little modification or transformation.
How long does the process usually take?
Sessions usually run from one to four hours, can involve a LOT of screaming, grunting, etc., and my work commitment to a single title might be a single one-hour session, or many four-hour sessions over a year or longer.
Re-records, rewrites, and pickup sessions are common. Sometimes whole storylines get scrapped and replaced, and I find myself auditioning again to voice a character I’ve already recorded from beginning to end! I call this getting “producerized.”
How do you find the right voice for a character? And, how much say do you have in what the character will sound like when working on a AAA game?
There is no “right” voice, technically. There’s no cosmic target to hit. It’s a job, so “right” translates to “accepted by the people in charge.”
The first consideration in vocal transformation is how much modification is necessary. A modern soldier is going to require almost no modification at all from my normal speech patterns, usually. An orc, on the other hand, will require a lot of modification.
The next consideration is what to change, in what way, and to what degree.
For the soldier, a more monotone intonation pattern {is called for}, like a football coach talking to his players on the field.
For the orc, I need to create a sense of size, so I’ll slow down and use a lower pitch. I’ll also favor chest resonance, because {orcs} are kind of an amplification of masculine stereotypical patterns, like low pitch, chest resonance, and monotone.
Add texture to make it monstrous, a Cockney accent (to stay in keeping with the norms established by the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit films, and the Games Workshop IPs), a little underbite and a wide open mouth to make room for the fangs and tusks. And boom. You got an orc that’s immediately recognizable by an audience as stereotypically “orky.” It fits the accepted tropes, and fits the visual image of its body and vocal tract.
Which is more fun to voice; villains or heroes?
I don’t really have those preferences anymore. In my 20’s, I got to cross a lot of roles off my bucket list (eg: Macbeth, John Proctor), and when I was done, it was really the same challenges and tasks as any other role.
So now my favorite role is whatever I’m working on at the moment. But I will say that variety within a character’s dialogue and actions makes for a much more fun experience. Soldiers are pretty much one note, “grunt work,” (if you’ll excuse the pun) and their lines are the pretty much the same for every title or franchise.
Out of the characters you’ve done VO work for, do you have a favorite?
No, because they’re all so varied. I really have a soft spot for Lars Halford in Brütal Legend, though. He was a lead, had a great arc, and it was an amazing cast and team. Tim Schaefer, the Doublefine gang, and Khris Brown are really something special.
The Pendleton Twins in Dishonored were just delicious, too, because they were so decadent and depraved, and their dialogue so heightened and playful. I love heightened speech. A lot of theatre folk get into acting by way of musicals. I got in by way of Shakespeare.
Is there a voice over job you wish you could’ve done but couldn’t because someone else got the job or it didn’t work out with your schedule?
Lots of near misses. I was a finalist for the animated series “Batman: The Brave and The Bold.” That would have gotten me into animation in a big way, and I would’ve been working regularly with the legendary Andrea Romano, who, thankfully, I got to do a session with for Diablo III before she retired.
But honestly, losing out to Deidrich Bader, just being a contender opposite him and others in his category, is as fine an achievement as I could have ever dreamed of when I started acting in college.
How important is it for a voice actor to take care of themselves physically?
The glottis and vocal folds (the source of the sound that comes from the Hulk, every orc, and every yell of “GRENADE!” in a first person shooter), can be contained in a space the size of a dime. Those tissues are delicate, they heal slowly if it all, and injuries there are hard to treat.
It’s easy to age your voice through wear and tear and smoking, but there’s no fountain of youth. Once those youthful dulcet tones are gone, they’re gone forever. Also, acting in general is blue collar work. We’re labor and we use our bodies to do the work, so we have to keep our bodies functional the same way a trucker has to get the oil changed in his vehicle. You can’t sub-contract out this work. Game work is among the most dangerous for the voice.
How do you go about creating an authentic accent for a character?
I look for two types of source material:
1. Authentic Speakers (eg: Craig Ferguson for Scots)
2. Popular Stereotypes (eg: Michael Myers aka Shrek/Fat Bastard/the father from So I Married an Axe Murderer for Scots).
I study the sound substitutions, the prosody, the rhythms, the oral posture, and then I make decisions about how I’m going to construct the speech pattern.
In contemporary theatre production, accent coaches are now asking to be billed as “dialect designers” in Broadway programs, because the work is in many ways a kind of design task. Just imitating a native speaker will work fine as long as your audience’s cultural reference point for the accent happens to sound like a native speaker sounds.
But, what if your audience’s reference point for German isn’t actual Germans, but American actors applying a German-sounding accent (eg: Hogan’s Heroes)?
Or, what if the sounds of the accent are meant to have a comedic effect, such as the German-Yiddish mashup of “Vaudeville Dutch” (read: Deutsch) from the days of Vaudeville, Sid Caesar’s “professor” character from “Your Show of Shows,” and Mel Brooks’s films?
An actor must do a delicate balancing act, of weighing authenticity, verisimilitude, recognizability, intelligibility, and entertainment value.
You’ve worked on several video games as a casting director. What are you looking/listening for in an actor/actress that would make you recommend them for a role?
All else being equal, the thing that I’d need the audition to reveal is an actor’s mastery of acting fundamentals. Many actors have a built themselves a massive structure of technique, tools, tips, tricks, gimmicks, etc., and this rickety structure teeters on an unstable foundation of insufficient facility with acting fundamentals.
The structure often is an attempt to substitute for, or obfuscate the lack of, that foundation. An actor with strong fundamentals will give a performance that has versimilitude, is compelling (when the character’s stakes are high), is in keeping with the given circumstances of that moment, and is an economical execution of the actions that the writer has tasked the actor with performing, and nothing more.
A skilled actor whose line is “GRENADE! GET DOWN!” will use the words and volume to warn his squad as if their lives depended on it. The insufficient actor might try to impress me with emoting, try to stand out by inventing irrelevant circumstances, or will try to “show me their skill.”
The skilled actor simply performs the task in front of them, motivated by what the character appears to be motivated by. The insufficient actor tries to do several conflicting things at once, motivated by their own need, insecurity, or narcissism.
It was announced in July that STAR WARS: Clone Wars is making a comeback and you were a part of that project. Can you tell us what it was like to work on the Clone Wars and how much it means to you?
Working on STAR WARS: Clone Wars was a blast and an honor. The first movie I ever saw, at probably an inappropriately young age, was STAR WARS: The Empire Strikes Back, and I was hooked.
Getting to work on a STAR WARS show, and to voice a character that would be a part of STAR WARS canon at a notable moment in the narrative (the first appearance of Chewbacca) is still an experience I regard with pride and gratitude.
Director Dave Filoni is great people and a skillful craftsman. The cast were friendly and welcoming. And, the team at L.A. Studios is always a joy to work with. So, yeah, it means a lot to me, and I’m humbled and privileged to have been a small part of this thing that means so much to so many.
You founded the Voice-Over Career Launch pad – Can you tell us what that is and why you created it?
I created the Voice-Over Career Launch pad to give form to two of my favorite activities; mentoring actors and bucking the status quo. I’m a teacher, but I’m also a contrarian by nature.
I think that the standard avenues of skill-building for actors: the class model, private coaching by-the-hour, and the semester-long class in academia, are all insufficient and ineffective for the serious actor. They’re perfectly fine models for most interested parties, because the serious actors are a very small minority of the people who will pursue training. I wanted to make something to serve that demographic in the most effective and efficient way possible.
So I assembled a training program for early-career, high-aptitude, committed voice talents, which is designed to have them realistically ready to launch their home VO business in 8 to 10 weeks. We set up or upgrade their home studio, teach them acting fundamentals, VO technique, audio post-production, business savvy, and broad general mentoring.
I work with very few people at a time. Usually, no more than three, but often just one. So far the ROI for our clients has been consistently high. Many of them book their first gig either during or soon after completing the program.
Though I’m constantly upgrading it, the program does work, and it does work in just 8 to 10 weeks. I do, however, screen applicants thoroughly and don’t work with most people who seek us out. It’s not going to work for anyone who isn’t bringing a lot of natural or acquired aptitude and/or isn’t highly committed to getting up-and-running immediately.
On the Voice Acting Mastery podcast, you mentioned a Career Launch pad specific to video games? Can you talk any about that yet and when it might be up and running?
I do have the second program up-and-running now, which is focused on breaking into video game Voice-Over. Like the core VOCL program, its design is focused on maximizing ROI for our clients in the shortest time realistically possible.
It also depends on us screening for the right kind of prospective client. In this case, {that would be} a mid-career working pro, preferably with an agent and/or union and/or based in an industry hub like Los Angeles. The prospective client has to demonstrate that they have or will soon likely have access to enough game VO auditions to make a program like this worth it for them.
We’re not looking for our alumni to leave VOCL saying “it was fun and I learned so much.” We need our alumni to leave VOCL saying “I did VOCL, and now I’m working.”
What’s your best piece of advice to someone starting out as a voice actor?
First step: take an intro class with a reputable teacher. You won’t be that much better by the end than you were when you started, but that’s not the point.
The point is to answer the following questions:
1: Do I like this?
2: Am I good at this?
3: Do I like these people I’m working with?
If you decide to proceed past this, then get a mentor who is working, who is legit, and who is more invested in your success than their own unmet ego needs.
You don’t need to find info about what to do. It’s all on the internet, and that’s the problem. . . it’s ALL on the internet, and you don’t know which advice to follow and which to avoid. A mentor operates as a BS-filter. It’s invaluable and will save you years and thousands of dollars worth of mistakes.
{End Interview}
Thanks so much to Mr. Hanks for taking the time to answer our questions. We very much enjoyed meeting him and hearing him speak at this year’s Southeast Game Exchange. We wish Zach the best in all his future endeavors.
You can see a list of the cool projects Zach has worked on during his career on his IMDB page.
You can follow Zach on Twitter. If you’d like to be considered for Zach’s VO Career Launch pad, you can schedule a consultation, here.
