For a long time, LA was the place where every aspiring actor saw their greatest opportunities. Hollywood was the Mecca for every movie star and a synonym for the entire film industry. However, the opportunities for actors have now expanded greatly as a new major player has emerged in the entertainment industry: the gaming industry. This is where completely new roles and tasks arise for actors, often using special technologies such as motion capture and green screening. Stories are not necessarily linear and sometimes different endings are filmed - an exciting challenge for Hollywood stars!
Actors transform into animations
The demands on graphics in computer and video games are increasing. Producers want to create the most realistic look possible while still integrating the often exaggerated proportions and comic-like designs. The result are characters that look like real superheroes, but have great facial expressions and appear almost real thanks to the finest textures. All of this is done using motion capture technology, where real actors are needed to bring characters to life. The technique is also used in the film, but here mostly to create a non-human character , such as Gollum from Lord of the Rings. More and more games are achieving particularly lively characters that move like real people and appear less stiff and animated. For this purpose, an actor wears a tight-fitting full-body suit to which a large number of sensors are attached. Dots are also stuck on the face for the computer to recognize. Numerous movement sequences, facial features or even entire scenes are then played out in front of the camera, which later control the skeleton of the animated character on the computer. The movements become natural.
Big stars in video games
While the first games with motion capture tended to rely on unknown actors who were often no longer recognizable in the finished game, today characters are often modeled based on the actor's appearance. This of course brings new opportunities for actors, because now they were no longer just the screen for a fantasy character, but could transfer their own faces - in animated form - onto the screens. Advantage for the actor: A player spends significantly more time with a video game than a viewer with a film. The attention from the players increases enormously for the actor. This may be the reason why many stars have now taken part in major video game productions . The game Beyond: Two Souls was one of the first games in which global stars took on the main roles. Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page slipped into tight motion capture outfits and played through each scene individually. The game was often referred to as an “interactive movie” because you could make decisions about the course of the story. With so many different scenarios, you had to deal with scripts with thousands of pages and a significantly higher number of shooting days. A new game with star power is currently being eagerly awaited: Cyberpunk 2077. In it, film legend Keanu Reeves takes on the role of a game character. The game will be available from September 17th.
Hollywood is no longer the only place for actors to start a successful career. They also find great demand for talent in video game productions produced in international studios. Anyone who sees their dream job in this industry has more options than he or she might think. Filming for video games is more complex and requires a lot of imagination from actors, but the work itself is, according to some statements, particularly exciting and varied.
Hollywood was the Mecca for every movie star and a synonym for the entire film industry. However, the opportunities for actors have now expanded greatly as a new major player has emerged in the entertainment industry: the gaming industry.
