Michael Sinterniklaas is a Voice Actor who's done work for many different forms of media. GamePress staff member Hakurai sat down with him in November at 2017 Anime NYC.

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How does the workflow differ between Japanese and American shows and games?

In American stuff you have a little more liberty on the way you perform it, because that informs the way it’s animated later. Sometimes they’re animating it as soon as it's being performed, and they might do pick-ups because they animated a choice that was a different performance.

But at least you don’t need to worry about timing, which you need to worry about for anime. Animation usually happens first for anime. The whole performance has been chosen for you, and you need to justify your vocal performance to retroactively fit into what they’ve done, which is really challenging.

I heard there was a session happening at Studiopolis, and Mark Hamill stuck his head in to say, “You guys are dubbing? Oh man, I used to do that. Good luck, guys, that’s tough stuff!” He’s a top of the pops voice actor, but when it comes to dubbing and all the stuff you want to do, you get shackled a bit. Which I think is a fun challenge, but it’s more of a puzzle.

Other than this, you typically aren’t allowed to do group recordings when you’re dubbing. It’s great to have a group because you can have conversations, really inspire each other, listen, respond and the chemistry is there! At NYAV post, we work really really hard to try and make it so that everyone really sounds like they’re talking to each other specifically, not just giving nice performances one line at a time.

How about Video Games?

When it comes to video games, I feel like it’s not that different. Though in some of the American games I’ve done, getting to do mocap and stuff is really, really cool.

The difference with video games is that you don’t always have much context. Very few video games record as a group, and even fewer do rehearsals. Naughty Dog is considered the kings of narrative. They do rehearsals, and like any real theatre, TV, or film, you should be able to rehearse so you can work out some stuff and dig a little deeper, so when you shoot it, you have some experience.

So much of what we do in voiceover is a first take, or a cold read. A lot of times it’s about non-disclosure, so you don’t even get your script ahead of time sometimes. There’s no substitute for homework, and getting to prepare would really elevate everything.