Production
Casting
There were 14 casting sessions; 457 actors auditioned — 90 of them were selected and every person was entirely facial-captured during production.
The director chose this method to more accurately and precisely record the subtle nuances of expression, to best convey the emotional weight of each of the characters’ intentions.
There were over 172 days of mocap shooting — creating over 30,000 unique animations for Heavy Rain.
“We were not just looking for someone to give his [or her] face or his [or her] voice, but we were really looking for the full actor.”
— David Cage
Before capturing the performance, the actor’s face and body is 3d scanned — keeping their same body type, height and proportions.
Actors must deliver a natural performance in the context of a player making choices. For instance, in the second chapter the player can choose Ethan to be a responsible or withdrawn father. Either way remains true to the character *
Z Brush was used to clean up facial and body scans to prepare them for in-game use.
“We use the existing actor as a basis and then we try to make the character fit his part in the game … we worked hard to produce the best character rendering on any machine. For instance, our main aim was to set a new benchmark in terms of realizing in character rendering.”
— Thierry Prudhomme (Lead Character Artist)
Music
“Music is 50% of the impact of Heavy Rain … at the same time you want to keep the same intention, intensity and emotion in every track of the game.”
– David Cage (Director)
The official soundtrack of Heavy Rain was scored by the late Montreal composer Normand Corbeil and recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. Normand worked on the earlier Quantic Dream title Indigo Prophecy. His last project for Sony was Beyond Two Souls.
The soundtrack has a definitive sense of consistency throughout each track; many of them are in written in the same key and center around the same core set of notes in a different sequence, depending on the tone. The mood of the soundtrack is immediately palpable.
There are quieter sections of the songs that build the player’s tension and suspense by the sheer music alone, heightened exponentially by the events of the scene; for example Norman Jayden’s theme when he arrives at the scene of the murder.
There are riveting action songs of high tension (e.g. “The Fight”, “High Tension”, “The Chase”), songs of ominous suspense (e.g. Scott Shelby’s Theme, “Before the Storm”), sentimental songs (e.g. Madison Paige’s Theme, Lauren Winter’s Theme, “Last Breath”.)
Some of the songs are context-sensitive, where the tonality of the scene weighs heavily on the way the song is interpreted. For example, Painful Memories (the theme of Heavy Rain) is played at the beginning of the game, when the player first interacts with the character by doing a series of activities around Ethan’s home.
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