Interview with David Schaufele (Voice actor for Eddie in SH2) (Silent Haven)Date published: 2011.09.26 Not much has changed since we last heard from the actors side of this fiasco, but we do know now that Monica Taylor Horgan (voice actress for Mary/Maria) has been in contact with Konami and working things out amicably. I contacted David Schaufele to ask him a few questions about voice acting and his perspective on the HD Collection controversy. He gave some interesting stuff on residuals… Enjoy! Silent Haven: Hello Dave, It’s a thrill to able to talk with you today about Silent Hill 2. Many fans have questions about your memorable performance as Eddie in Silent Hill 2, for example what it was like to work with Team Silent and the other cast members. I hope you don’t mind if I also slip in a few questions about the current controversy regarding the HD Collection. David Schaufele: Well, first of all thanks for your kind words and for all the support from you loyal fans. It’s truly amazing the way the game has taken on a life of its own. Voice acting can be tough with a lot of disappointments along the way so it’s sure nice to get a little recognition once in a while. How and when did I start… I guess back in elementary school my grade 5 homeroom teacher Mr. Morley was also in charge of the drama program and whenever he forgot to prepare a lesson he would make us do little improvisational skits to fill the time. My influences then where Cheech and Chong, Monty Python and of course Disney characters were also fun to imitate in polite company. In the school play that year my computer robot voice landed me a part inside a cardboard box. I saved up in my late teens, bought a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder and tried to write songs. In my early 20s I moved into radio jingles without much financial success. But I do recommend volunteering at local theater, radio and TV stations as a great way to get your foot in the door and meet some cool people who will inspire you. Professionally I guess things really started to take off in Tokyo after I was selected by a heavyweight New York producer to narrate a United Nations documentary. He said that my Canadian accent was more neutral than American, with a bit of British clarity and the UN wanted one version that could be used worldwide. I started doing radio at the national broadcaster NHK at around the same time, 1990, so the voice agents could use these two selling points with clients. I improved a lot over the next few years by working with a hard-nosed old American director overdubbing numerous Japanese 35mm movies and cartoon animations. Imagine 10 actors standing side-by-side in a dark movie theater. The microphones and scripts were on stands with small lights and we recorded an entire scene in one take. Suddenly this booming Wizard of Oz voice would scream and swear and fire the actor standing beside you. Then add his part to your list of characters. Talk about motivation to get it right every time or starve in the unemployment line. Silent Haven: Have you performed in any games other than Silent Hill 2? David Schaufele: A couple dozen over the years and about half registered my credits on IMDbPro. But most never become big hits like Silent Hill 2. That’s perhaps why they usually don’t bother with any written contracts because the odds of getting past the first version are slim. As computer graphic technology developed in the 90s the top group of voice actors in Tokyo added games to the list of annual work. It was a chance to see old friends in a big studio and do the same style of complete take recordings of scenes like with 35mm. Gone was the big movie screen with 20 foot high talking faces, in comes a TV and it was much tougher try to catch the lip movement on your character. But when you see the finished product it’s easy to forget how many hours of production went into making it from a script. You older gamers might remember Sega’s Dreamcast machine that came out well before Playstation and had great features but lacked cool software. I mention this because it made an impression on me watching the size of the production required to create Shenmue with like 300 characters. It cost a small fortune and took several years to complete. So even with a one-year console lead, Sega lost out to Sony because of a better selection of software available. Silent Haven: Have you been keeping up with any of the newer installments of the Silent Hill series? David Schaufele: My nephew is a big gamer and he checked them out and kept telling me that SH2 was still the best so that sort of satisfied my curiosity. To be honest my three children were still small when SH2 came out and they were into Nintendo mainly because everyone could play together. Family changes your priorities. Silent Haven: Can you tell us a little about the auditions. What were they like, and how did you nail the part of Eddie? David Schaufele: Funny story actually because I didn’t hear about it from the casting agency. I took my daughter to the audition because her school friend told her about it. After she was finished they asked me if I was interested in auditioning and I thought it might be fun to work with my daughter if she got the part so I agreed. Since I had no time to prepare I just winged it. It was just a typical audition, stand in the middle of an empty room and pretend this is here and that is over there and you are crazy, now read this. They had already seen all the top theater guys in town so I figured the odds were slim. I think maybe it was my vomiting that clinched the deal. I traveled around Asia in my early 20s and got sick from bad water and food poisoning numerous times. Silent Haven: Eddie comes through as very believably insane. How did you develop your performance? David Schaufele: I guess that was also from some old traveling experiences. I spent a year and a half backpacking through jungles, mountains and deserts in Asia and the Middle East. I had more near-death experiences than I care to count and I met a few crazy characters along the way. Silent Haven: Can you tell us a positive memory you have from working with the cast on Silent Hill 2? David Schaufele: The cast and crew were all great people. That’s the nice thing about working with artistic-minded folks in general. The Japanese writer and director were really cool and let us kind of go with an idea if it was working. Sometimes they had a very specific request that you had to follow and other times they just said go for it and let’s see how it turns out. It was nice getting applause from the director and crew after finishing some of the intense scenes. Sometimes you have to deal with producers and directors with big egos who are trying to justify their existence and put on a performance for the client. Having too many company reps on hand often means they’ll want you to try it a dozen different ways until lightening strikes and they finally figure out what they actually want. Then the arguing dies down and they ask you which one you like best and go with that. Typically whenever the business side gets involved the art suffers. But the SH2 creative guys were really cool and seemed to be calling all the shots. I could sense that there was a kind of raw genius at work. Silent Haven: Guy Cihi and Monica Taylor Horgan claim there were no written contracts or rights releases ever signed with Konami. What do you say? David Schaufele: Nope, I didn’t see any either. But that’s not unusual because most games never succeed in a big way and survive long enough to make it to a new platform or have a sequel made that uses some of the old material. Keep in mind that a project has to make a lot of profit before management decides to risk a big chunk on a sequel or moving to a new platform. Silent Haven: Based on your experience in the industry, would you say it is common or uncommon for games to be produced without signed releases and contracts? David Schaufele: It’s common in Japan but largely because written contracts were traditionally not the norm for many business activities between Japanese companies. I heard that written contracts were first required by foreign companies because they wanted things spelled out in black and white to avoid misunderstandings due to language etc. Occasionally I am asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep things secret during production. Silent Haven: Has Konami ever contacted you for any reason since the original release of the game? If so, what did they have to say and how did you respond? David Schaufele: No contact until last year when I guess someone in Konami’s legal department must have realized that they hadn’t paid us for additional use and had no signed waivers. So they sent all the actors a form letter asking us to sign away our rights to all past and future additional uses of our performances. I replied asking for more information about the past and future uses they were referring to, but never heard anything after that. I work with Donna Burke and she mentioned the same situation where Konami failed to respond to her reply for more information. Silent Haven: Some Konami people have been blaming Guy Cihi for forcing them to hire new actors for all the voices. Konami said that additional payments such as residuals are not paid to actors in the games industry. They said that games are done on a buyout basis and actors don’t keep any rights to future re-uses. It seems pretty logical. Isn’t that how it really is? David Schaufele: Well I’ve received additional use payments from Namco for Tekken every time they bring out a new version that contains one of my voices. Each residual was roughly equal to the original payment. When the game was released for PS3 and X-box I got twice the usual amount. My agent just calls me up like clockwork. Silent Haven: Are you saying that each time the Tekken game was re-released on a new generation console, the publisher came to you in advance and paid you an additional fee, I mean that hardly seems possible after what the Konami people said? David Schaufele: It’s usually after the fact, when production is completed and the actors in the latest version are confirmed then the paperwork moves upstairs to the accounting department. There’s typically no, hey let’s send out a waiver letter instead and see if the actors will sign away all their rights so we can save the company money and get an Xmas bonus. Actually, I recently heard that Thessaly Learner, the main actor in SH1, said when they used her voice for SH3 without permission, her agent threatened to sue, and she got four times the original amount. So that kind of blows a big hole in Konami’s story that no residuals are ever paid for their games. Silent Haven: Why do you think Konami went to the huge expense of hiring new voice actors rather than negotiating global releases from you and the other original actors? Did you and the others demand a really high price or something? David Schaufele: Not that I’m not aware of. But maybe the accountants at Konami added up what they owe us for additional use and it was cheaper to ignore us and go into the recording studio for a few hours with new actors. Remember, we spent a lot of time doing motion capture. The final dialogue replacement in a recording studio was relatively quick and easy. So I guess the accountants didn’t want to share with the artists and maybe management figured you gamers would like the new voices better or not notice the difference. The casting agent on the SH2 job was a company called VOICEBOX, I think, or something like that. Two partners as I remember, Harry Inaba and Jeremy Blaustein. Normally they should have gone to bat for us when the game was re-released. If Konami had wanted to get written releases from the actors way back when, then those guys would have been responsible for giving us a pen. Silent Haven: There has been a lot of controversy on internet forums about the quality of the voice actors - both old and new. Some people don’t seem to mind, but others are vehemently upset about new voices. From your perspective as an industry pro, what’s going on here? Why the big outcry over new voices? David Schaufele: Fans respect original art, whether it’s music, film or video games. I think that fans connect with the characters, then imitate a favorite line or two when playing the game or among friends. So if you suddenly change the voice it’s like an invasion of the body snatchers and you start messing with sacred memories and breaking links to personal experiences. Joe public may not notice when stuff goes down the memory hole but gamers know how to keep score. Silent Haven: By the way, have you heard the new voice actor Konami picked to play Eddie? What do you think? David Schaufele: He’s got a nice smokey Hollywood voice. My natural voice is closer to that so it would have been much more comfortable for me to do it that way. But the Japanese director specifically wanted a younger sounding Eddie, who was more edgy and insane. Silent Haven: There’s been so much vitriol on both sides of this issue, battle lines drawn etc. If you were Konami what would you do at this point? David Schaufele: It’s time for some face-to-face talks, and preferably over beers and pizza! Silent Haven: Thank you very much. |