Morla Gorrondona - Spotlight on Voice Acting
Morla Gorrondona is a voice actor know for her portrayal of Eris in the Destiny Series. Learn about her background in VO and the video game industry. She has a unique angle on the craft and has become a beacon for anyone seeking success in game audio.
Discussion
101:
Morla, your voice over success is of great interest to the community. I've seen VO really grow over the years from relative obscurity to mass appeal. How did your early years growing up in New Orleans affect your current reality?
MORLA:
My experience with video games pretty early on was the same as yours, I grew up playing video games but there was no voice, so I wasn't even aware that it was a career path until way, way later on. I did theater in grade-school and high school and went to Ole Miss for theater - I got my bachelor's of fine arts in theater performance at Ole Miss, which was a wonderful program. I had a wonderful experience, amazing professors- I feel like I really received a solid education that propelled me forward, definitely. And one of the focuses I had within acting class was a voice diction class which I really enjoyed. I think my very first voiceover job that I received was while I was at Ole Miss. I was in rehearsal for a play called "Sweet Bird of Youth" with Theater Oxford and I was approached by the friend of a director who was doing a commercial for the Medical Center, and yeah right there in the middle of the stage he built a sound booth- a crude sound booth, but a sound booth nonetheless, and he recorded me, and he said, "Well, it's either between you and a male voice," they were looking at their options. But he said, "You'll hear it eventually, you'll know whether they chose you or not." And then I did, I did hear it, sort of in like- I'd fallen asleep on my sofa and I woke up hearing the commercial and I went, "Hang on, I know these lines." But it was not my voice. I was like, "Oh, they clearly went with the male voice instead," and then I paused and listened a little bit more clearly as you do when you're waking up things are kind of groggy, and I realized that the voice was Morgan Freeman! So. It's nice that it was between him and I.
101:
Yeah, that's a pretty rare coincidence!
MORLA:
From Ole Miss I went on to New York. I pursued theater there but I kept getting hired to do voiceovers and it wasn't until many many years later along with my reintroduction into video games- I was playing Bioshock- that I realized that there was this whole career of voice acting that's compelling and gratifying and boundless as far as opportunities available. I can be whatever character I want to be. I'm not bound by my physical limitations. And that's thrilling.
101:
It seems your theater background played a role in your voice career. I think a lot of people forget how much acting goes into emoting the dialogue in voiceover. How important was your theater background in regards to this?
MORLA:
Oh, it's invaluable. Voice acting isn't just the ability to talk. It's deeper than that, it's much more involved, there's a process behind it and I use everything in my arsenal that I gained through- even from my earliest days of acting, and through the whole improv career that I had. I use everything that I've learned.
101:
I heard a voice actor talking about the importance of a practice routine with crazy swings in character and timbre of the voice and just pronouncing things differently as a way to stretch the voice. You can tell when someone's just lifelessly reading something.
MORLA:
That's part of the process of learning, especially for voice actors in video games because scripts are not usually available ahead of time. So there is a scale involved with receiving the script and being that character and immersing oneself into that character fully, deeply, completely, and immediately. It's tricky though
101:
Are there any rituals you go through to prepare for that?
MORLA:
Well, yeah, I have my daily practice. I have a vocal warmup that I do everyday which speaks a little bit to what you were talking about with the stretching of the voice. My vocal warmup, part of it includes increasing my range and trying on different voices and accents and different registers. But as far as getting ready for a character, what I like to do if it's a character that I'm living with for a while, I like to associate a song with that, or maybe a couple of different songs. And usually there's a drive involved with going to the studio so in that time I listen to my selected song or just sit in the parking lot and allow that song to build the character. It's just one step in a larger process. But I find it soothing and also energizing and also very emotionally informing.
101:
Is it just a kind of a random song that you've associated with that character?
MORLA:
Sometimes it just arrives. Sometimes it just pops up and becomes really evident and other times it's a hunt to find a song. I've had that where I thought it was one song and then I realized later in the recording process that "Oh, no, this one fits better," so I switch.
101:
Wow, yeah that's a really unique approach . Along the lines of tips for preparations, is there like a certain kind of tea that you use? Because at one point people would be like, "don't do lemon tea, it's like acid on the vocal cords," or this or that.
MORLA:
Yeah, there actually is. There are things that I consider for sure. What I eat, how much water I drink, what I avoid, all those things go into preparation. So I do, there's a tea called Throat Coat, that's my favorite. And I do also like- they say you shouldn't have too much caffeine, but sometimes you also need caffeine just to get that energy, so I do an Earl Grey. And I put lemon in my Earl Grey but I also put honey so it kind of balances out that acidity
101:
So maybe avoid a six pack of Red Bulls and smoking a carton of cigarettes !?
MORLA:
It wouldn't be my course of action. You'd have to drink like twice as much water to counterbalance the drying effect. That's like the Tom Waits approach to vocal deconstruction. You know like they say Tom Waits got his voice because he used to scream into the pillow so hard so he could get that rasp. I believe it. I don't know if the story's true or not but I tend to believe that story.
101:
Do you see type casting in the VO industry for folks that just have that certain kind of dusty voice.
MORLA:
Sure, I mean there are actors who have a specific type and they have amazing and abundant and successful careers doing that type. And there are also voice actors flexing their versatility and range. I think it's important to explore both areas. My voice comes very naturally to me but I also like to explore other registers too. I enjoy characters that are outside my register. I played a chipmunk or two in my day. I recently met up with a lovely voice actor who that's her niche and she knows that's where her voice is and she knows that's her bread and butter so she focuses on that she does a wonderful job with it.
101:
Was there anything particular that you did to get ready to get into the character of Eris in the Destiny series?
MORLA:
Sure. Absolutely. when I was given the character description, it resonated with me and I had some very vivid images that came to mind and I just kind of filed them in my brain and so I referred to those mentally before a recording session. I would recall those images and let them inform the emotional state, Eris's emotional state, and of course I do my regular warmup. The song that I associate with Eris is a song called "Indus" by Dead Can Dance and it's a very long song and it's- there's a vocals part to it, but it's not English, I'm not actually 100% sure that it's an actual language; it might just be its own thing, but the singing that she does is like a new language that is beautiful
101:
I think the acting experience can't be overemphasized. It's crucial for becoming the character
MORLA:
Yeah. Acting especially in front of a live audience is such a rush. It's very exciting.
101:
What do you recommend for those looking to break into VO?
MORLA:
I think one of the most important things to start off with is to get used to the sound of your own voice. And understand what it is that your voice can do. If you're starting with zero background, like you don't have any kind of theater experience or choral experience or even public speaking experience, just spend some time recording your voice because that's a great first step. And do it a lot. And then slowly start to stretch your voice over time, see what it can do, and have fun with it. And play with it and be really terrible. Allow yourself to be terrible with it and then decide if you still have passion about it. I think having, creating a demo and finding an agent would be would go side by side. Some agents won't see you unless you have a demo and some will. So if you can get yourself a demo, an agent, a voiceover, there are agents who deal with, who work specifically with video games. They are rare, but they do exist.
101:
Are there certain events that you might recommend or a common thing to attend as far as networking?
MORLA:
It's not common for voice actors to attend, but it's something I like to do that has proved me very beneficial to me is to attend video game development conferences like GDC and GameSoundCon. Those are the ones that I tend to go to most often and yeah, I think spending time with the people who make video games and who oversee game audio is probably a really good thing to do if you want to work in games.
101:
Sure, and I know it crosses over a lot into TV commercials and radio commercials is really big. In fact, podcasts these days sometimes have a VO professional introducing the podcast.
MORLA:
It's interesting, once you start realizing how often voiceover appears in our everyday lives everywhere. It's interesting too when you were talking about the different sort of pillars about voice acting. There's commercials, and there's- there's all sorts, there's so many different ones and it's kind of similar to what I was saying about type. Vocal type. It's good to know what your main focus is and it's good to know where you want to put most of your energy, and it's also not a bad idea to diversify as well. So, for me, video games is my main focus. I would say video games and animation but also commercials, movies and awards announcements. Those are all things I do as well.
101:
The best VO work is so good that you don't even notice it. It's so cohesive with the moving picture and in the sound design in the back that you can just fall right into it, and obviously you're carrying the emotion of the entire segment. It's such a powerful thing and I wanted to ask you if you ever work with coaches
MORLA:
Sure, every session has a voiceover director and sometimes that title falls in the lap of somebody who works one the audio team or somebody who works on the narrative team. Most often, it's someone who is hired specifically for his or her ability to kind of speak actor language which is a whole other skill set as well. it's in everyone's best interest that there's a single point of contact, the actor speaks with one person who is the sole source of information about the emotional direction of the script and who the character is talking to. All the information should come from one person. I've been in situations where it's come from multiple people in one session which can be confusing since there's conflicting information and can turn into arguments. When you're in a session, time is money.
101:
Yeah, there's so many subtleties to it. All these inflections- up or down, or monotone. A director must know what to listen for. They are like a giant pair of ears walking around
MORLA:
I think you really hit on something there with knowing what you want to hear. Having a very clear vision is essential and I think for a voice actor, being very receptive to altering that is key. So it's a balance of arriving with an understanding, but not being so locked in that there's no room for movement or change of direction. I recently went into a session where I knew the character backwards and forwards, I was ready, and then when I arrived, they said, "Here's the rendering, and here's where we want you to go vocally," and it was the opposite. The absolute opposite of what I had in mind. So I had to be prepared just to throw everything that I had already in my mind out the window and go with what they want.
101:
And that flexibility is one of the things that defines a pro. Being able to change directions at the drop of a hat
MORLA:
Developing a character is an art as well as a business too, so you have to know when to put your foot down and say, "I really believe in this vision that I have," or let it go, and say, "Hey, you're the boss." Rarely have I- I don't think I've ever said, "No, I know better about this character than you do." There was one time where I said, "I don't think the character would say that, she'd say this," and they were like, "Hey, you're right." But other than that- I choose those moments very wisely.
101:
I remember working in a call center where we learned that smile on a phone call actually changes the timbre of the voice
MORLA:
Yeah, there's a whole genre of theater called mask work and it's- part of the training is that your face behind the mask isn't dead because your face still informs what you're saying, the energy that comes out, how the words come out, absolutely. If nothing else it puts you in a different state of mind, a different frame of mind.
101:
Yeah, the facial gestures. And every time you watch pro voiceover clips of people in the booth it's always pretty animated with hand gestures and face contortions
MORLA:
It's like a wedding. People going out onto a dancefloor and dancing, like, "Oh, yeah, I should be a dancer." Well, you wouldn't- just because you can do it and you have fun dancing at a wedding maybe that's something that could lead you to a career in dance. But just because you can talk doesn't- maybe, that's the first step, but there's a whole process to it.
101:
Just because your grandpa said you're a good dancer doesn't mean to pursue it professionally! Morla And maybe it is, but to make the leap from dancing at a wedding to dancing on a stage is discounting endless hours of work and dedication and discipline.
101:
Now, as far as putting a demo together, would you recommend soundcloud, bandcamp or myspace?!
MORLA:
Yeah, I think soundcloud is great. The key is you want easy access. Whatever you have, make sure nobody has to go hunting for it. So if it's a link, make sure that it's right there when they open the link. No one's going to go on a journey to find your demo. And if they do, when they arrive, they'll probably be in a worse place, in a not-so-accepting place, when they arrive.
101:
And of course, you've got to have some nice business cards too A: And it's so easy these days! it takes time to make it look the way you want it to, but you can. Having your own website may help in showing your professionality
101:
Morla....Thanks so much for your time, this was super awesome!
MORLA:
Thanks so much, it was great talking with you.
Visit the official Morla Gorrondona site HERE
