How do voice actors remember and keep track of the character they are doing when they have so many?
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If you do a character for ten or a hundred hours then it becomes fairly easy to memorize them. Remember these are experts who have put in the time to *become* said experts, and just because it seems hard to use doesn’t mean it is hard for them.
Another thing to consider is that voice actors know when recording days are going to happen and can brush up on their skills and recollection in advance. Recordings exist; if they don’t quite remember how a character sounds they can listen to their previous performances and pick it back up.
Many VAs spend quite a bit of time developing the character and their voice, and then proceed to spend countless hours performing lines as said character, so there’s a lot of time for the memory to develop. It can be a bit tricky to get back into character at times if there’s been a long break (think of the first bike ride after months), but once you do it for a bit, everything just sort of falls into place.
The voice actor director or director sits with them. They know the script and lines being recorded really well and will give the actor cues.
Sometimes the cue are really general: “Say that line like you’re sad.”
Or they can get more precise: “OK, say it now faster, but pretend like you’re not sad, but you really are.”
Or they may just lay out the scene: “The characters dog just died and they are explaining to their kids and pretending to be brave.”
But usually the director will hedge their bets and just record tons of different styles: “Say it more sad”. “Now say it less sad.”
Then the director can come in later and choose whichever performance they liked best. Recording lines is relatively cheap and a good voice actor can get through many many lines very rapidly in many different styles.
As to the characters, generally they only record one character at a time. So even if the dialog is back and forth between A and B and one actor is doing A and B, usually they record all of A’s lines then all of B’s lines to minimize confusion. But they do that anyway if A and B are played by different actors.
Same way we remember the voices of different characters when we watch them.
Or in Justin Roiland’s case, just do two different voices with two different personalities.
I was wondering the same thing. Here is a video of Jeff Hayes cold reading a section of my current favorite audiobook series.
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