Learn how Gideon Emery (PCAP, VO, TV, Film, & Theatre Actor) has honed his craft through years of theater to decades voicing and performing in blockbuster video games. Learn how acceptance is the heart of his craft, why he finds PCAP to be the ultimate performance, and how he gave a droid (BD-1) it's soul through a nose flute.
Gideon Emery was born in England, but his childhood took shape in Johannesburg South Africa. He was the class clown, the kid doing school plays and impressions for his friends and family. Through this, Gideon sparked his creative drive and learned hat he loved to entertain. It gave him, as he says, the greatest pleasure. When it came time to choose, he applied to both fine arts and drama school in Johannesburg and was accepted to each. He chose to pursue acting, reasoning with teenage logic that it might prove the more lucrative living. The training was traditional and thorough: a multi-year honors program in the British mold, Stanislavski and Grotowski, movement, voice, set building, and even a stretch of TV production. Gideon was skilled and fortunate enough that during his schooling he also became a working professional actor and the opening into the profession came almost by accident. In his final year he tagged along to a pantomime audition only because a friend was going. The show featured Bill Flynn, a beloved South African actor playing the dame, and Flynn generously introduced him to his agent, who was part of a firm that, unusually for the time, also handled voice work. They sent him off to cut a professional demo, and a career he had been quietly rehearsing since childhood began in to become a reality. Gideon spent the next ten years working in South Africa performing for commercial video, voiceover, film, TV, and a play or two a year to "keep himself honest". Although he had built a solid foundation in South Africa, he knew he wanted to test himself further and had his eyes set on Hollywood.
"Pcap I think is the most challenging and the ultimate form of performance. The first time I experienced that was like, oh my gosh, this is great. This feels like I'm doing theater."
By this time he amassed a decade of press, secured an EB-1 "extraordinary ability" visa, and moved to Los Angeles in the early 2000s. He landed a voice agent right away and a Mini Cooper launch promo that helped keep him afloat, but even with this start, building a foundation in LA was still the hardest part of his career. In time, his range of accents made him ideal for videogames, where one actor often voices several characters and games soon became his bread and butter. This eventually led him into performance capture where he felt right at home as if we were back in the theatre. He soon came to see motion capture as the ultimate, most challenging form of performance in that incorporates everything from head to toe. This led to one of his favorite and most popular roles, BD-1 from Star Wars. A role he found genuinely fresh, with no facial or likeness capture, built almost entirely through physical performance and puppeteering. He took the performance even further and developed the droid's "voice" with a nose flute introduced to him by his generous castmate Debra Wilson, shaping melodic beeps with emotional content rather than flat robot noise. Gideon says playing BD is some of the most joyful work he has done, a return to why he got into acting in the first place.
"Within each of us is the capacity to be everybody, so it's just sort of giving everyone space to be themselves and space to also not be perfect."
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To this day, you will still hear and see Gideon in various games and tv shows. He continues to build his craft and lead his life around a single idea: acceptance, the belief that the capacity to be anyone already lives within him. His love of performance continues to drive him and he is now sharing his technique with others through teaching his LASER acting method. LASER stands for Love, Accept, Save, Emote, Respond. A medium-agnostic, judgment-freeing approach built on the conviction that authenticity as a performer starts with authenticity as a person. His through-line, on stage and off, is simple and hard-won: lead with love, give people space to be themselves and to be imperfect, and just try to be a good human. Or as BD-1 would say "Boop Beep Boop!"
"Not many actors enjoy auditioning. I love auditioning. I love it so much because I love acting. You very quickly embrace the fact that you're going to be auditioning more often than you're working."
Learn Gideon's Technique!
If you would like to learn Gideon's technique dubbed "The LASER Acting Method" then you can learn more by clicking the image below.
1. "What was your general background and what was life like growing up?"
2. "Was anyone else in your family artistic or creative?"
3. "How did you first get into acting?"
4. "When you got into both fine arts and drama school, how did you decide on acting, and did your family have concerns about it?"
5. "Do you think formal drama school training is essential to becoming an actor?"
6. "What made you want to come to LA and take a shot at Hollywood?"
7. "How did you first get into video games and voiceover once you arrived in LA?"
8. "How does PCAP compare to TV, FIlm, and Theatre?"
9. "Coming from Theatre, did you have to unlearn your theater habits when you moved into film and mocap?"
10. "On a mocap stage, when is it appropriate to change up a line or improvise vs sticking exactly to the script?"
11. "What's your approach to playing creatures and characters who are not humanoid?"
12. "Can you tell me about the LASER method you've been developing?"
13. "What's your take on method acting and staying in character off set?"
14. "How did the role of BD come about, and how did you develop his Character?"
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