Display MoreHere's one for the archive: an article from the November 1994 issue of British magazine PC Games (#4) which features an article about Mark Hamill. The focus is on his career as a "vactor", a term for virtual actor which luckily did not catch on in any way, shape or form. His upcoming appearances in Gabriel Knight and Wing Commander III are discussed with some interesting details. The most exciting part, however, is this otherwise uncirculated photo of Mark, Chris Roberts and the Emperor's skin:
MARK HAMILL MY LIFE AS A VACTOR
AFTER BATTLING THE EMPIRE IN STARA WARS, MARK HAMILL RETURNS TO DEEP SPACE IN ORIGIN'S WING COMMNDER III. EVANS WENT TO MEET HIM AND GOT HIM TO SIGN HIS STAR WARS VIDEOS.
The last time I saw Mark Hamill, he was younger, slimmer and running around on television waving a green, fluorescent stick. The film, of course, was Star Wars, and Hamill was playing Luke Skywalker, a goody-two-shoes Tatooine farmboy who was befriended by Alec Guinness and then dragged halfway across the galaxy to rescue a beautiful Princess.
But that was 1977 and after two more Star Wars films, the instantly forgettable Slipstream and various minor television and stage roles, Hamill disappeared from the mainstream completely. Recently, however, he has made a bit of a comeback and after providing the voice for The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, he’s now heavily involved in computer games. Believe it or not Mark Hamill is becoming a virtual actor — a Vactor, if you will.
After starring in Sierra’s graphic adventure Gabriel Knight, Mark Hamill is now treading the digital boards in Origin’s new space epic. Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger. But this time, rather than providing a voiceover for a computer animation, he’s actually acting on-screen, creating impressive, movie-like Full-Motion Video sequences alongside the likes of John Rhys-Davis, Malcolm MacDowell and some eight-foot-tall, animatronic Kilrathi warriors.
Of course, FMV in games is nothing new. But acting against a green screen meant that the actors were often interacting with objects and backgrounds that weren’t actually there. Bob Hoskins, for example, played to empty space in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Sam Neill did the same in Jurassic Park — the animation and/or special effects were added to the footage afterwards. It’s not exactly an easy thing to do.
“At first it was a bit intimidating,” admits Mark, as eight more journalists crowded into a small room to listen to the interview, “but it’s a lot less difficult than you might think. The storyboards were readily available on one side of the soundstage, and before we started shooting I had a colour Xerox of all the backgrounds that would appear. So, if 1 did my homework the night before I’d know what background I’d be acting against in, say. Scene 34.
“We also looked at the monitors a lot and, obviously, if we had to touch something or sit down there’d be the chairs and the props there on the set. But acting is pretend anyway and acting with nothing is not as unnatural as you might think. There are scenes in movies, ones that don’t require special effects, where you might be riding in a car, but you’re not really in a car, you’re sitting in a cut-away with technicians rocking the whole thing from side to side...”
Nevertheless, the detail in Wing 3 is superb, particularly the scene where Blair (Mark Hamill) and Paladin (John Rhys-Davis) stand on a rocky outcrop staring at the wreckage of a huge Terran carrier. The Concordia. The wind is blowing and, when two Federation Arrows wheel overhead, both actors turn to watch them.
“This was a very interesting sequence to film,” explains Chris Roberts, Wing Commander 3’s Director. “Obviously the Concordia and the Arrows weren’t actually there so we had Mark and John look up at this guy standing on a ladder, who was holding a big sheet, and we shot it like that.”
Working in this way the actors have a specific spot on which to focus their attention, but reacting to a flimsy sheet of paper rather than a massive starship or a sweeping landscape can create its own problems...
“You can’t afford to overact,” says Mark. “You must always be aware of what the backgrounds and the missing elements actually look like. Jack Nicholson once told me about doing a movie called The Terror, where he was supposed to cross this drawbridge, look down at a piece of paper on a nail and say something like [here Mark launches into a frighteningly good Jack Nicholson impression] ‘I’ve never seen so many fish in my life.’ But when he went to the screening of the movie the special effects guys had only put two goldfish in the water, but Jack had acted like it was swarming with exotic Japanese fish.
“I try not to make that sort of mistake. Besides, in Wing 3 there were always monitors around, so it was fun to get in front of the green screen and then look over at the monitors to see yourself against the backdrop. Sometimes I was literally climbing a ladder to nothing, but when you look at the monitor there’s a big starship there.”
But unlike the other members of the cast, Mark Hamill is no stranger to acting in computer games, in Sierra’s voodoo adventure, Gabriel Knight, he played a chubby detective with a New Orleans drawl...
“Yeah, that was fun — but I would put Gabriel Knight in a voiceover category because I didn't have to physicalize the character. I think I was doing a voice like a bad Clinton in that one. [Mark launches into a bad Bill Clinton voice] but I didn't even know what the character looked like when I was doing him. I read dialogue into a tape recorder at my agent, and from the tape I guess Sierra picked me.
“People ask me what is was like working with Tim Curry but I don’t know, because I never met him when we did the project. I’d met him before but when we recorded Gabriel Knight I was in the studio on my own. Just me and the director, in Wing 3 you’re actually on the set and doing scenes with real, live actors. I think Gabriel Knight intimidated me less than Wing 3 because I thought ‘Thank God, I can just sit down and read this’, but with Wing 3 I didn’t want to get out on the set, in front of 70-100 people and not be able to deliver.
“With Gabriel Knight I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. For instance, I had no idea that Sierra were going to advertise my participation in the game on the cover of the box. Like most animations I thought it would be much more anonymous.”
Fortunately, Mark is no stranger to performing animated voice-overs because, as mentioned earlier, he recently provided the voice for The Joker in the Batman cartoon series.
"In the Batman cartoon, you have the whole cast in the studio and it's recorded like a radio play. In that particular case, though, they changed their minds about who should play The Joker. The original guy did six episodes, so when I went in I had to record six episodes by myself, dubbing to finished animation. The remaining 20 or so episodes I did with the rest of the cast.”
It seems that working on Gabriel Knight was much harder than Wing 3 or Batman, because Mark was stuck in a booth on his own and as a result couldn’t react to anybody.
“It’s very flat and you don’t get the rhythm of the exchange between key characters at all,” continues Mark. “There’s an almost schizophrenic nature about saying the same line with different variations, thinks like: 'Well alright, but I've got to call my wife first... Well alright, but I've got to tell the chief... Well alright, but I've got to...' You could go nuts.
But this is one of the pitfalls of a computer-game plot. While a movie script may be 80-ppages long, an 'interactive' movie script would be 80-pages long and 40-pages wide in order to accommodate all the possible plot branches and player actions. Of course, if the player can perform more than one action in any particular situation, the actors must record and act an appropriate response.
“Wing 3 is actually very linear,” says Chris Roberts. “There’s a definite start and a definite end, well, two ends — one where you win the war and one where you lose it. But along the way you can customise the story. This doesn’t affect whether the game is won or lost but how the story evolves.
“For example, there are multiple love interests for Blair, and so while you could choose Ginger Lynn Allen in one game, you could choose Jennifer MacDonald in another.”
Multiple girlfriends aside. Origin assembled a truly stunning cast for Wing Commander 3, including John Rhys-Davis (star of the Indiana Jones movies) and Malcolm MacDowell (A Clockwork Orange).
“The cast was amazing,” remembers Mark. “John Rhys-Davis I’ve met before, but Malcolm MacDowell is a seriously funny guy. You say one word to him — Caligula — and you’ll get an hour and a half of stories. Tom Wilson is also one of the funniest guys I’ve met — he’s the guy who plays the bully in the Back To The Future movies. Now I’ve finally watched the footage I’m amazed that I kept a straight face...”
With the big film companies like Paramount, Time-Warner and Sony now buying heavily into the games industry. it’s extremely likely that the Hollywood crossover will continue. Apart from Wing Commander 3, Deborah Harry can be seen in Sega’s game Double Switch, Grace jones and Dennis Hopper are rumoured to be working on Gametek’s Hell and Margot Kidder and Brian Keith are currently starring in US Gold’s Under A Killing Moon. The big acting talent is arriving faster and faster and they love the new medium.
“I really enjoyed it,” enthuses Mark. “I like a challenge. In a similar way I actually went off and did a Broadway musical and I thought ‘I don’t know if I ever want to do this again, but I did this one’. Everybody involved in Wing 3 felt that it was a novelty and we’d never done anything like it before. That makes it more interesting than doing a movie or another television series, but it’s exciting for actors because actors need work and if this is the way it’s going to go. I’m all for it.”
Just as Star Wars changed the face of movie science-fiction, when you see Wing Commander 3 in action, you get the feeling that this game could change the way that the ‘interactive’ movie is perceived. And as more actors flock to star in the latest CD-ROM blockbuster, the Mark Hamill renaissance will continue with another film role.
“I’m doing a remake of Village Of The Damned; a john Carpenter film, it’s got Kirstie Alley and Christopher Reeve in it and I start on the 26th of September. It’s my second John Carpenter film and my second really grisly death. I play Reverend George and I’m about to kill these kids with a shotgun — you know, the ones with the glowing eyes — but they will me to turn the gun on myself.
“The first time I met John Carpenter he had a Luke Skywalker costume on, I swear to God. it was supposed to be a surprise for me. I still think it’s amazing that Star Wars inspired so many people. I mean, Chris was only about four when he saw me in the movie. God, that’s frightening!” Apart from the forthcoming Village of the Damned remake, Mark admits that he has no firm plans to do another computer game.
“People have also asked me whether I’ll be doing Wing Commander 4... I actually thought this was quite funny because we obviously filmed a scene where I get killed. Of course, I could always come back again as my own twin brother, like Jack Palance in City Slickers 2... but I want to see how this game turns out first.”
And then that was it. Our time was up, the door opened and a smiling Public Relations person bounded in to rescue Mr Hamill from journalist hell. Tape recorders off and cups of coffee all round, I think.
“Is that you?” asked Mark staring down at my mugshot in the magazine. “Er, yes,” I replied, “It’s a bad photo.”
“Yeah, I’d recognise Dave but I don’t think I’d recognise you again.”
“Cheers, Mark.”
Chromo-what?
The Full-Motion Video sequences in Wing 3 were filmed using modern Chromakey techniques, where actors perform in front of a blue or green screen background and are then digitised by computer.
“Every scene was filmed against a green screen,” explains Chris Roberts. “But some of the scenes had live props, so the recreation room would have tables and chairs and the Kilrathi throne room had the big throne and dais. But essentially we were always shooting against a green screen.”
In the next stage of the process the graphic artist ‘cuts out’ the footage of the actors and tidies up the images to smooth out any pixellated edges. Finally, the actors are overlaid onto a pre-rendered, high-resolution computer background.
“But we also did rough composites on the fly too, to help the actors,” adds Chris. “The final finished footage takes actors from the matt plate, puts them on the background and adds the animations and the other details.
Big budgets!
Csting over $3 million to create and produce. Wing 3 follows the adventures of Colonel Christopher Blair, the character acted on-screen by Hamill.
As Blair, you must lead your fighter squadron against the enemy Kilrathi, dogfighting new starships, rescuing POWs, skimming above carriers and finally flying a suicidal mission over the Kilrathi homeworld to avenge the death of a friend. A true SVGA space adventure, WC3 is more like a movie than any game released on the PC so far.
Voodoo-Magic!
With over 7,300 lines of recorded dialogue, amounting to more than three, feature-length film scripts, Gabriel Knight is a stunning example of how professional voice-overs can enhance a CD-ROM game. Set in New Orleans, Gabriel Knight is a point-and-click graphic adventure which revolves around a series of grisly voodoo murders. Mark Hamill plays the bumbling detective Mosely, while Tim Curry provides the voice for the hero Gabriel. Star Trek’s Michael Dorn (Worf) also stars.
Captions
Mark Hamill was in London helping to promote Wing Commander 3 at this Autumn’s ECTS. Obviously, he can’t believe he’s just met Dean Evans and David Upchurch...
The computer generated backgrounds in Wing 3 are extremely detailed, while the quality of the full-screen, full motion video sequences puts games like Under a Killing Moon to shame.
Veteran actor Malcolm MacDowell (A Clockwork Orange) plays the moody Admiral Tolwyn.Here's the whole article. There's a great inset of the unused Wing Commander III transport in there, too!
