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Strong Dual Casting Team

To have a strong duo of casters it is important that there is some sort of chemistry. You also have to have a thorough understanding of the game and possible builds etc. The best way to improve at all of these aspects is just to practice. If there is something you find that your partner is doing that you don't like/feel they could improve, say something and help each other to get better. Ultimately, practice makes perfect as with everything else. Your last blog resulted in a lot of feedback on the roles of casters and it may be important to go back and reread this with your co caster and perhaps set some goals.

Here's the link: http://www.sc2sea.com/blogs/showentr...&cutoffdate=30

Hopefully that helped a bit

I would say my partnership with wolf is very beneficial in all cases, its very easy for me to see where he is awkward and where he shines from GSL when he hasto cast with someone other than me, simply because i have worked with him for hundreds of hours within casts, you learn to understand where they will stop talking and you can create a repor that will allow no downtime and you can critique each other without any backlash. you and your partner should compliment each others strengths and weaknesses such as game knowledge, enthusiasm and energy during tense moments within the game. it also allows you to know intimaatly what they know about the game and for example, there is some downtime, I would throw questions to wolf like, "so last game we saw X happen, how did that create or lose an advantage etc" and help him shine in his analysis, at the same time when im doing my play by play he will throw in "drop" or "flank" just 1 word clues for me while im in full swing, because he knows what i look at and when, so he can cover my blind spots and give me a heads up. its like any team sport it takes time to get these things down

Key benefits:

1) Familiarity. Knowing a person and getting along with them helps a lot because you learn their verbal cues and you get accustomed to how much/what they tend to say, so you can seamlessly switch back and forth without talking over each other. Also helps when you're being more humorous. Chemistry is pretty important in making a cast flow well, because two casters aren't supposed to be just two individual commentators.

2) Roles. Dual casts let you focus on aspects, having a caster (entertainer) and commentator (analyst). It's a lot easier than solocasting because each person can focus on what they need to bring to the overall performance, and thus you can give a more well-rounded presentation - very few casters can do both at high level when solo. This doesn't mean you can take it to extremes though, both should be able to play off the other's role so that you have decent synergy, just that one person takes the lead in that situation.

Improving:

Just work at it - talk to the person outside of casting, play games with them/against them while chatting, get comfortable in how you discuss the game and converse with them. From there, it's the same as any other casting improvment: watch your casts, get people you know to listen in and give you criticism where possible, and go watch your casts some more. Pay attention to how your pair interacts when listening, so as to see how the audience would hear you. Fix problems you find.

And something that many casters miss -
While it may be good to have excellent chemistry and to have a hilarious conversation on stream, sometimes this is at the expense of the game. A downside of dual casting is that you are each other's distraction as well.

All too often, I hear casters/streamers talking about how drunk they are, what shit they faced on ladder, etcetc when I'm jabbing at my screen pointing at a drop that's taking place which they're clearly missing.

While it's good to be entertaining and talk to each other on stream, I feel that the priority should still be the game. You are not having a conversation with your buddy and incidentally watching and commenting on the game. You are watching and commenting on the game and incidentally having a conversation with your buddy.

Always have an eye on the game. Always

Yeah crAzerk brings up a good point - new caster pairs often either act too individual and focus purely on discussing the game and ignoring the co-caster, or going too far the other way and overly chatting aimlessly. It's fine to talk, entertain the audience with semi-related stuff, build chemistry etc, but make sure you do it when nothing's going on (first 3 minutes, for instance, or between games).

That's a problem - It's a reasonable assumption that nothing will be occurring within the first 3 minutes, but often the players may be going for some sort of special build (spanishiwa, proxy, early 2 gas, etc) , and they miss it.
This is especially so for BoX series, when players try to switch it up to confuse their opponents, etc.

It may be just my personal preference but I do like it when casters talk about the BO that both players are going for, and if it's some standard opener then ok go back to banter or something, but still keep an eye out for irregularities.
Then again there may be audiences that enjoy the random banter and have perfect understanding of any odd builds so ... lol.

I was working under the assumption that the casters could identify first what is going on, then use that to determine if there was a gap in the action of the game.