NEWS - Tuesday, July 6, 2004
Dan Stevens And Peter O’Keefe Grilled
On Friday I got what I considered one of the best interviews I've had in a long time; a conference call with the great Dan Stevens and Peter O'Keefe, the commentary team from ESPN NFL Football. But Dan and Peter aren't real people. They are actually fictional characters voiced by two veteran actors. Dan Stevens is played by Jay Styne, and Peter O'Keefe is played by Terry McGovern. Terry's voice acting roots go back a long way. While his big claim to fame was being the famous "These are not the droids we're looking for" Sandtrooper extraordinare in Star Wars, Terry has been the voice of many a character and video game and has done some on screen stuff as well, from movies like Ms. Doubtfire to being the voice of Duck Tale's Launchpad McQuack! Most recently besides ESPN NFL 2005 Terry had a part in EA's Battlefield: Vietnam. Jay has also done some extensive voice acting, mainly in the video game arena. He has been the voice of Gilder in Sega's own Skies of Arcadia, and Ex-Elite Assassin/Lt. Steven Archer in Sony's Syphon Filter 2. He just finished doing a Japanese to English Localization of Jo-Jo's Big Adventure. He told me it took 5 pages for his character to die. But it's here in the NFL 2K games that Jay really shines and shows his versatility. So catching up with them, we had a great coversation. And it turns out, that Jay and Terry are really cool guys and it was definitely a pleasure to talk to them: Mike: It is so great to talk to you guys today. We've been such big fans of the work you do in the NFL 2K series. But we know you are actors and not football guys. But have you done any actual Football commentating? Jay and Terry: Actually no; we are pretty straight-up voice actors. But in the game our "commentary" booth is actually more traditional than other games. Our fictional character's Peter OKeefe was based on an actual football player. Dan Stevens was just like the "duff" guy in the booth that provides the pithy jokes and things. The mixture give us the ability to be loose and have fun. Mike: How much freedom do you guys have when you're in and doing the recordings? And if you're doing staight up voice-overs, who writes the scripts for you? Jay and Terry: Visual Concepts writes all this stuff before we get there. And we have to mention the sound director at Visual Concepts who does such a fantastic job with writing. His name is Brian Luzietti. He's a beast, a genius when it comes to this stuff. Be sure to catch the full interview hereSource: http://www.nlgaming.com
