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Answerman - Why Do Dub Voice Actors Stick To The Same Studios?


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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:02 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
A lot of the actors you named simply don't live in the same state as the studios you wish were recording them. Funimation records in Dallas, Texas. Stephanie Sheh lives in Los Angeles. She might be able to fly in to record a movie role or something, but a recurring role in a never-ending show like One Piece? Forget it!
Heck, it doesn't even need to be different states; Texas itself is formidable enough. Some VAs make the 3.5-4-hour drive between Dallas and Houston on a semi-regular basis, but others have rarely or never appeared in dubs produced outside their city. The commute was more common when ADV restructured and drastically cut down their dubbing activities, and many VAs sought work at Funimation. But a lot of them have families, day jobs, or other acting opportunities closer to home that make the trip impractical.

Fun fact about Texas: if you are entering the state on Interstate 10 from the west, you are closer to that road's endpoint in Los Angeles than you are to the eastern edge of Texas. Similarly, if you enter from the east, you are closer to Jacksonville, Florida than the western edge of Texas.
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NJ_



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:09 pm Reply with quote
Sam Murai wrote:
Dubs like NYAV's, as well as Sengoku Basara spoiler[(still not sure how or why FUNimation did a TX/LA dub for it, and never really did such a mix again (just a test?), but I'm glad they did)] and Komugi-chan (featuring ADV's Texas regulars co-mingling with returning VAs from Canada's Ocean Studios dub of The SoulTaker, of which the show is an alternate spinoff of), are definitely treasures to behold because of their rarity, even if the show is just okay. Too bad it cannot be a more regular thing, even just for a movie or OVA.


Capcom localizing Sengoku Basara 3 is why we have that dub as both that and the first season were being worked on at the same time and both were released on the same day.

Despite issues with some of the anime-only VAs (I personally didn't like Robert McCollum as Date Masamune compared to Reuben Langdon who voiced him in the game), I enjoyed what FUNi did with Sengoku Basara and that they continued with it to the [judge] end, even after Capcom didn't bother localizing 3 Utage, 4 and the 1 & 2 HD Collection. Mad.
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Greed1914



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:36 pm Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
Quote:
A lot of the actors you named simply don't live in the same state as the studios you wish were recording them. Funimation records in Dallas, Texas. Stephanie Sheh lives in Los Angeles. She might be able to fly in to record a movie role or something, but a recurring role in a never-ending show like One Piece? Forget it!
Heck, it doesn't even need to be different states; Texas itself is formidable enough. Some VAs make the 3.5-4-hour drive between Dallas and Houston on a semi-regular basis, but others have rarely or never appeared in dubs produced outside their city. The commute was more common when ADV restructured and drastically cut down their dubbing activities, and many VAs sought work at Funimation. But a lot of them have families, day jobs, or other acting opportunities closer to home that make the trip impractical.
.


It also seems like the increased use of simuldubs has affected how often Houston actors will appear in Funimation roles. At a convention Greg Ayers said that he would drive in from Houston to record, and then drive back home the same day since staying at a hotel would mean losing money on the trip, plus they don't find out very far in advance if they are needed from week-to-week, so scheduling to make the most of each trip is difficult.
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BlueRex666



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:37 pm Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
I'm surprised Todd Haberkorn didn't stay in Texas, he got very well treated at Funimation, there are plenty of shows where he got to play the main character, or at least one of them some of them even being big shows. Whenever I see him pop up in a Viz Media or Aniplex dub, it is either a small reoccurring character or a one off character.


Overall I think there are more acting opportunities in LA. Not just anime, various video games,the occasional western animations (Grey Matter from the Ben 10 reboot and Sparrow Hood from Ever After High). You can get your name out there more in LA.
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BlueRex666



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:47 pm Reply with quote
angelmcazares wrote:
I am surprised Justin did not mention unions. I could be totally wrong, but I assume that for a famous actor like Johnny Yong Bosch going to Texas to do a non-union dub could be a problem if Funimation or Sentai pays him less than what he normally earns at a California dub studio.


I'm not sure Johnny is part of the Screen Actor's Guild, and even if he is he might of claimed "financial core" status like Stephanie Sheh or Matthew Mercer. While this requires the individual to pay union dues, it also allows them full union protection on union jobs and does not obligate them to honor the union's bylaws (basically they can work in union and non-union jobs).

Also when Johnny was starting out in voice acting, he actually did a few roles with Funimation (bit role Lujon from episode 35 of the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist and even major character Yuji "Saku" Sakurai in BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad) so maybe he's got some clout.
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epicwizard



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:50 pm Reply with quote
Primus wrote:
The vast majority of LA dubs aren't union.

I wonder why. Are union dubs too costly?
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Morry



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:55 pm Reply with quote
I'm actually curious how relevant distant will be in the next decade. Funi's been rather regularly using Todd's studio for broadcast dubs which has led to some surprising cast choices.

I think the bigger issue is scheduling on a week-to-week basis, and that might change if more anime start getting their materials in early to dub. (Funi's accomplished this repeatedly with Bones)
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jr240483



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:55 pm Reply with quote
Sam Murai wrote:
Punch Drunk Marc wrote:

It's always a treat to hear Texas VAs in a LA/NY dub and vice versa.


Dubs like NYAV's, as well as Sengoku Basara spoiler[(still not sure how or why FUNimation did a TX/LA dub for it, and never really did such a mix again (just a test?), but I'm glad they did)] and Komugi-chan (featuring ADV's Texas regulars co-mingling with returning VAs from Canada's Ocean Studios dub of The SoulTaker, of which the show is an alternate spinoff of), are definitely treasures to behold because of their rarity, even if the show is just okay. Too bad it cannot be a more regular thing, even just for a movie or OVA.


there is also the unfortunate case of those ever so confusing union/non-union rules that answerman forgot to mention that prevents some of these VAs to do different roles. unless they use aliases that is.

for instance their union might have their VAs use an alias if their are planing to do a series that have EXTREMELY QUESTIONABLE CONTENT like in girls bravo , berserk , queens blade, tengo tenge and ikkitousen.

the only exception to that alias rule was in samurai girls / bride where an ANN reviewer said it was their choice to use an alias and not a union/non-union rule.

regardless, its rather curious that these voice actors/actresses would rather live in LA than in texas considering the latter state have the second lowest amount of taxes in the country (the lowest is in FL.especially in Miami) and there even no state or income tax as well either unlike in Los Angeles , CA have the largest taxes in the state other than new york.

i should know since i live in NY (though specifically in Queens)
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Mr.Shonen



Joined: 13 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 4:37 pm Reply with quote
Ocean Studios and ADV crossover. That's sounds like an interesting combo.

Honestly you think that with the rise and advancement of the internet/technical communications/sound recording/etc... there would be more mixing and mingling where you could eventually get the dream casts that fans crave.

Finally, haven't a couple of the most noteable NYC VAs left for LA over the past few years.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:28 pm Reply with quote
JGZinv wrote:
This is interesting to consider that Funi will use an LA recording studio, as in the Tenchi fandom there's a very well known case of Funi replacing Petrea Burchard (Ryoko) with Mona Marshall. What we found out later was Funi wasn't paying enough to even cover her travel and food expenses.

With Petrea being "the" voice that was used in every English release up to that point. It must have been a budget reason not to use a local studio. But even then, you could say then why not build your cast from the top down and get the primaries taken care of first?


I could've sworn I read somewhere that Petrea Buchard had passed away...was that incorrect?

Stormwaltz wrote:
This was an eye-opener for me, mostly because I prefer subs, but partly because it's completely different, logistically, from how we record VO in the game industry.

When I worked at a company in Canada (around ten years ago at this point), 2-3 audio people took the scripts and flew down to LA to record at a studio there. Now I work at a place in Southern California, and recently we recorded actors at a studio in Montreal -- but no one flew anywhere, we coordinated with them in real time via Skype.


I think the biggest issue here is the size of the business and perfectionism. Anime localization is a lot smaller than video games, and their budgets are smaller accordingly. At the same time, there seems to be a lot of audiophiles in the anime fandom who will complain if everything isn't done perfectly and consistently, technology-wise. The easiest thing to do, under these circumstances, is to record everything in the same location with the same people.

Zalis116 wrote:
Heck, it doesn't even need to be different states; Texas itself is formidable enough. Some VAs make the 3.5-4-hour drive between Dallas and Houston on a semi-regular basis, but others have rarely or never appeared in dubs produced outside their city. The commute was more common when ADV restructured and drastically cut down their dubbing activities, and many VAs sought work at Funimation. But a lot of them have families, day jobs, or other acting opportunities closer to home that make the trip impractical.

Fun fact about Texas: if you are entering the state on Interstate 10 from the west, you are closer to that road's endpoint in Los Angeles than you are to the eastern edge of Texas. Similarly, if you enter from the east, you are closer to Jacksonville, Florida than the western edge of Texas.


A lot of European tourists in the United States have problems with the sheer geographical scale of the country, I've noticed. It's hard to grasp the concept of such a large country like the US (or Canada, for that matter) if you don't already live somewhere that's also enormous (like Brazil, Russia, or China).
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Primus



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:41 pm Reply with quote
epicwizard wrote:
Primus wrote:
The vast majority of LA dubs aren't union.

I wonder why. Are union dubs too costly?


Too costly for North American anime distributors.

SAG has a publicly accessible database you can go through and see just how little in LA gets a union dub. Just make sure you list "2001" as the production year. For reasons I don't know SAG always lists anime under that year. If you see "Unforeseen Productions, Inc." that's just Bang Zoom. The other companies should be self explanatory.

The situations are usually like this:
- Canada (Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto) = Almost always union. Calgary/Edmonton dubs are not produced under ACTRA, but still a "union." Newish studios have entered the GVR scene within the last few years but I don't know their status.

- Hong Kong = Of course not.

- Los Angeles = Usually not union unless it's part of a prestige thing or from a huge company like Disney or Sony.

- New York = Usually not union.

- Texas = Never union.
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JGZinv



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:02 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
I could've sworn I read somewhere that Petrea Buchard had passed away...was that incorrect?.


She's still kicking, myself and a few others used to be major contributors at TenchiForum. We had a convention event with her at ChibiPa. You can find her on Facebook these days, mostly being a novelist. https://www.facebook.com/petreaburchard
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Kalessin



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:24 pm Reply with quote
JGZinv wrote:
This is interesting to consider that Funi will use an LA recording studio, as in the Tenchi fandom there's a very well known case of Funi replacing Petrea Burchard (Ryoko) with Mona Marshall. What we found out later was Funi wasn't paying enough to even cover her travel and food expenses.

With Petrea being "the" voice that was used in every English release up to that point. It must have been a budget reason not to use a local studio. But even then, you could say then why not build your cast from the top down and get the primaries taken care of first?


This is the first I've heard of anyone claiming that we'd actually heard the reason why Petrea Burchard didn't reprise her role. At the time, all that either she or Funimation said was that they couldn't come to an agreement (which certainly implies that money was the problem but doesn't actually tell us, and even if money were the problem, it wouldn't necessarily be travel expenses). And since everyone in the dub of the third Tenchi OVA was an LA-based actor and not Texas-based, I'd be very surprised if they didn't dub the series in CA, in which case, Petrea's travel would only have mattered if she were living someone else at that point. ANN lists the dub studio for that series as A.M.I. Anime Dubbing, not Funimation, which would strongly imply that they did the dub in LA rather than Dallas, but that studio is only listed as having dubbed that series, and searching for them elsewhere online doesn't seem to reveal much, so I don't know that we know exactly where it is aside from the fact that all of the actors involved were LA actors, implying that the studio is/was in LA.

But either way, they clearly didn't do the dub at Funimation, and so while it may very well be true that they weren't willing to pay Petrea Burchard what she wanted, it seems pretty questionable that the problem would have been travel expenses. Her wikipedia page claims that she currently lives in LA. So, she probably was local to where the dub was actually done even if she wasn't local to Funimation. As such, I find it very hard to believe that travel expenses were why they couldn't come to terms, though it's quite possible that money was indeed the problem.

But regardless of all of that, another thing to consider is that even if travel expenses were the problem, it's been over 10 years since the 3rd Tenchi OVA was dubbed. So, things could have changed considerably since then with regards to how Funimation handles dubs and actors who don't live in or near Dallas. They've clearly done some dubbing outside of Dallas in recent years when an actor is elsewhere, but that doesn't mean that they were doing anything of the sort 10 years ago.

But it's pretty clear that their solution in this case was outsourcing the dubs for GXP and the 3rd OVA, which should have fixed the travel problems unless an actor had moved away from the LA area since dubbing the previous Tenchi series (of course, even then, they didn't get the original actors for GXP - probably because the roles were too small to bother). And while it really sucked that they didn't get Petrea Burchard, they did manage to get the rest rather than simply replacing the whole cast - and even went so far as to outsource the dub to do it, which they don't normally do. So, while I'm very disappointed that they didn't get Petrea back, Funimation clearly tried to do the right thing and get the actors back (and largely succeeded), and I'm very grateful that they did. In other cases, they (and other studios) haven't bothered and have simply recast everyone (e.g. they arguably should have paid Ocean Studios to dub the rest of Shakugan no Shana, since Ocean Studios had dubbed the first season for Geneon, but Funimation went and dubbed the rest themselves with a completely different set of actors).

leafy sea dragon wrote:
I could've sworn I read somewhere that Petrea Buchard had passed away...was that incorrect?


Her wikipedia page does not list here as dead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrea_Burchard

and she has a website where she seems to blog stuff, and has posts as recent as last week: http://petreaburchard.com/

So, I think that it's safe to say that she's still alive.

She doesn't seem to have done much acting in the last decade though: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0120838/
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CandisWhite



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:14 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
A lot of European tourists in the United States have problems with the sheer geographical scale of the country, I've noticed. It's hard to grasp the concept of such a large country like the US (or Canada, for that matter) if you don't already live somewhere that's also enormous (like Brazil, Russia, or China).

As a Canadian, I have the opposite feeling. I once read a guide to Canada which talked about Canadians having no trouble driving for 4 hours and peed myself laughing at the idea that 4 hours is a long, let alone unimaginable, time to drive. I was talking to a Sri Lankan man about his home and he stated that something on one side was X km away from the other side; Without thinking, I said "Oh, you mean X00". "No, X." I blushed as I realized my unconscious blunder: My brain had automatically said that 2 borders can't be THAT close.
Greed1914 wrote:
It also seems like the increased use of simuldubs has affected how often Houston actors will appear in Funimation roles. At a convention Greg Ayers said that he would drive in from Houston to record, and then drive back home the same day since staying at a hotel would mean losing money on the trip, plus they don't find out very far in advance if they are needed from week-to-week, so scheduling to make the most of each trip is difficult.

Ouch. Just ouch. I'm looking at the ACTRA rates here and comparing to your example of a man who can't even afford a motel room for the night. Oooof. That's... wow.
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Vibrant Wolf



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PostPosted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 2:09 am Reply with quote
it basically comes down to affordability and convenience.
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