Hamill Talks Wing Commander Acting (April 8, 2010)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator

GamesRadar has conducted an interview with Mark Hamill on the subject of his extensive voice work. These days he's a famous actor in numerous animated series and video games, and the article also goes into his Wing Commander history. He's had enormous success playing The Joker in various projects, and he's still keeping busy today. Check out the full interview here. Thanks to HotT.
By the time of gaming’s full motion video (FMV) craze in the mid-’90s actors were eating their words. The titles may have been campier than a row of tents, but they were not short on talent, as Hamill discovered when he played Colonel Christopher Blair in three Wing Commander games.

“There were great actors in that: Malcolm McDowell [A Clockwork Orange], John Rhys-Davies [Lord of the Rings], and John Spencer [The West Wing]. Malcolm is one of the most hysterically funny actors I've ever worked with. He’s just brutal in his humor and merciless in terms of torturing you on camera. He would be making smoochy faces and I’d tell him, ‘You know, I never look you in the eyes, I’m looking you in the chin, you S.O.B.’”

... “We had cheat sheets of every kind. If you look at the game, when we’re looking down at the game's interface with light on our faces, that's from a teleprompter because of the massive amount of dialogue. One of the greatest things about doing animation or videogames is you don’t have to memorize your lines. You get as old as I am, it’s hard.”


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Original update published on April 8, 2010
 
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Hahaha I never realized that they were refreshing their lines when they were looking into the screens
 
Hahaha I never realized that they were refreshing their lines when they were looking into the screens

There's certain scenes where it seems pretty obvious...I wasn't really old enough to pick it up until Wing 4, and then I got paranoid and saw it everywhere - the opening scene in Tolwyn's office is funny 'cause both Hamill and Mcdowell are hardcore reading....mark seems to have pages on the floor, and malcolm's got that desk with stuff all over it....there's even a part IIRC where mcdowell picks up a folder and appears to be reading directly off of it...so it's not just in the scenes where folks are looking into computers!

When you think of the amount of dialogue, and probably very very tight time-tables for the whole production - its really the only way to go -
 
If you know how it works, it's pretty easy to spot, but I think they did it in a way that fits in well with the actual scene. Personally, it doesn't bother me if they were reading or reciting, the performances were good either way.
 
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