Up to now, there is a fair chance you will only have commentated on matches alone. Occasionally you may want to have a partner alongside and in general these people are known as “colour casters”. They provide the meat to your bone or offer expert analysis of what’s happening in the game. These people are usually well spoken, ex-players or respected current players from the top end of the scene, although they aren’t limited to just this circle of people and you may find writers, bloggers or site editors who can do the job just as well.
The approach to dual casting isn’t much different from what you have experienced so far on your own but be wary of the pitfalls that lay in wait for the inexperienced. Firstly, although obvious to say, there are now two of you and you will quickly need to work out when to talk and when to allow your fellow caster to talk. Generally on round based games, its better for you to call the action throughout and only at the end allow the colour guy back in to analyse what went well and what went wrong in the previous round. Don’t restrict him/her to just the last round either, pose questions as if you were a novice to the game and ask for expectations of the game, the result and even how the next round will shape up.
Questions are important and allow you to control the flow of the banter between the two of you. If you have no structure or if you haven’t spoken before the cast on how its going to work, expect a lot of talking over each other and that is honestly the worst thing that can happen. Most of this comes from the colour guy not knowing when he is supposed to speak and generally inexperienced colour casters tend to want to fill dead air, which is just as bad. So make sure you have a chat before you go onair and agree how its going to work. If it didn’t work well the first time, make sure you review what went wrong and be firm about when you want the colour guy to come in, you are supposed to be the one who knows what they are doing!
You can also lead in to the other caster without using questions, but instead use trailing words and dip off towards the end of your sentence for a natural way of flowing in to the colour casters words. If you are sat next to each other, you can also develop a set of hand signals or taps. I frequently put my hand up while I am talking to gain some natural pauses in the presentation, which basically means “stop” to the colour guy and he isn’t then compelled to fill the air when you stop speaking.
A lot of this is about flow and adding to the experience rather than making it a competition and some people are better colour casters than others and there will be some you get on with and some you wont. If you have a natural friendship with someone before they do colour with you, this usually helps the banter and the rate of comfort increases much faster, leading to better casts, but don’t forget why the colour guy is next to you in the first place, he/she is the expert, let them do their job and add quality to the cast too.
Sometimes you will find a second full play-by-play guy alongside you and these casts can also be very fun, mainly because you are both calling the shots. Again it takes practice and patience to perfect this and only time and an understanding of who is doing what and when will allow this kind of setup to work. Usually in round based games, we would take a round each and commentate it alone and go back and forth, but for time based games it can be trickier and you have to play it by ear much of the time, taking a 60 second segment, unless great action follows in which case, stick with it until it dies down and you find a natural way of handing off to your co-caster.
