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


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Punch Drunk Marc



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:44 am Reply with quote
There are some exceptions. For example Stephanie will usually pop in to Funi to play a recurring character (she was the main "antagonist" of the second season of Is This Is a Zombie?) or something small (like that random Illya cosplayer in Maken-Ki Two). There's also the times where she (and other LA VAs) are in some of the shows that Funi basically outsourced the dub for (Sengoku Basara, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Disappearance of Nagato Yuki, and I believe parts of Danganronpa 3).

Todd Haberkorn pretty much only comes back for FT (especially since the new anime will be coming out soon. I'm sure Funi will get that) and most recently D. Gray Man. But he also has his own studio that he records out of for projects. If I remember correctly I heard on an FT commentary after Todd already moved that he used his home studio to record Carrie Savage's lines for Fairy Tail (she played Lisanna).

Funi lost a couple of their bigger talents from LA moves. In addition to Todd Haberkorn and Vic Mignogna, Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham were among the first to move , Cherami Leigh left as well a couple of years ago, and just recently they lost Christopher Bevins I believe. There's also the fact that Alexis Tipton and Brina Palencia have done a bunch of video game work over there, and J. Michael Tatum was in a couple episodes of Pokemon I think.

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



Joined: 29 May 2004
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:53 am Reply with quote
Punch Drunk Marc wrote:


Todd Haberkorn pretty much only comes back for FT (especially since the new anime will be coming out soon. I'm sure Funi will get that) and most recently D. Gray Man. But he also has his own studio that he records out of for projects. If I remember correctly I heard on an FT commentary after Todd already moved that he used his home studio to record Carrie Savage's lines for Fairy Tail (she played Lisanna).


Yeah, I was gonna point this out. FUNimation often will use an LA studio if one (or more) of their voice actors has a reoccurring role in their series. While they do sometimes try to get the voice actors to come in directly into the studio, logistically, they'll often have them record locally in LA and such. Usually they'll use Todd's studio, though most recently they've been using another studio for Dragon Ball Super for Sean Schemmel and several other LA local VAs.

So yeah. They don't always record locally like they used to.

EDIT: I just realized this bit...

Quote:
why haven't I seen Johnny Yong Bosch on Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal,


...actually, there was an LA dub produced by TV Tokyo and ADK that had him as the lead. It just never got released, due to the ongoing lawsuit that was happening.
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Snakebit1995



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:15 pm Reply with quote
Punch Drunk Marc wrote:

Todd Haberkorn pretty much only comes back for FT (especially since the new anime will be coming out soon. I'm sure Funi will get that) and most recently D. Gray Man. But he also has his own studio that he records out of for projects
.


Todd pops up from time in a broadcast dub, he was in the one for Snow White with the Red Hair, and was the lead in Dagashi Kashi.

Vic as well has been showing up semi-frequently in Broadcast dubs as well, Show By Rock and Nanbaka being the most notable I think.

The main issue in terms of Funi dubbing is that a bunch of their stuff is done as Broadcast dubs, that means you need to get a commitment for near weekly recordings for a minimum 3 months (Or more if the show is long running, poor Brittney Karbowski has been booked up for like the last year with Monster Hunter Stories: Ride On). that's a long time to keep having to record over distance or constantly fly someone back and fourth.
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Sam Murai



Joined: 01 Dec 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:15 pm Reply with quote
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.
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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:23 pm Reply with quote
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.
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#861208



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:26 pm Reply with quote
There are a few TX/LA mixes, like Attack on Titan... did they just fly everyone out to Texas, or what...? It's not like it was a sequel or anything...
Quote:

J. Michael Tatum was in a couple episodes of Pokemon I think.


He did some when he was in New York for the NYCC premier of the Black Butler dub (wow, that was a long time ago...)

And I think some of the unions have a sequel exemption bit, or something... that's how Johnny and Yuri could come back for Code Geass (thank goodness, because it would quite legitimately be the end of the world if they didn't).
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Punch Drunk Marc



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:09 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 guessing Funi pays him well enough since he's been a few of their shows in varying roles over the past couple of years (Fairy Tail, Free, Akito The Exiled, the Trigun Movie, Space Dany, Danganronpa 3, and a few others. He even had a cameo in an episode of Psycho Pass).

I doubt Sentai would ever fly in people from LA or NY for shows. I could be wrong but they usually outsource certain dubs instead of flying VAs in (Queens Blade and Persona 4 being perfect examples).

I know one of the chief complaints about their Prisma Illya dub (aside from how...iffy it was) was that they didn't get any of the original VAs for Illya (Stephanie Sheh), Rin (Mela Lee), and Shiro (though it was kind a toss up as to who they could have gotten between Sam Riegel and Bryce Papenbrook since UBW wasn't out when the Prisma Illya anime first aired, but it was dubbed by the time they released the first set I believe).

Edit: I almost forgot about RWBY.

Rooster Teeth has managed to get some pretty well known names to be in the show's later seasons (Notably 2 and beyond), not only in Japanese but English too:

Yuri Lowenthal, Vic Mignogna, Chris Sabat, Josh Grelle, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Kent Williams, Cherami Leigh, Jason Douglas, Kaiji Tang, Mike McFarland, Aaron Dismuke, and a few others have all shown up in some form or another either as a recurring or one-time character.


Last edited by Punch Drunk Marc on Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:19 pm; edited 1 time in total
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JGZinv



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:16 pm Reply with quote
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?
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DerekL1963
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:18 pm Reply with quote
This is a consequence of the US being different from Japan and many other (physically smaller) countries. The US doesn't have One City to Rule Them All - a city that's a center of government, finance, commerce, business, culture, etc... And these cities usually contain a significant portion of the population - the Greater Tokyo region has almost a third of Japan's total population! (The greater New York metro area, the US's largest, by comparison contains just 5% of the population.) We're spread out across a larger landmass and are largely an aggregation of regions rather than one country depending from a concentrated center.

Folks pointing out those exceptions shouldn't forget they are exceptions, not the general rule.
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Stormwaltz



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:18 pm Reply with quote
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.
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Animegomaniac



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:25 pm Reply with quote
I kind of indirectly asked the possibility of a multisource dub as a question during the recent Aria Kickstarter and got an answer that it could happen, that while they were centering the dub in New York, the existence of smaller private studios... and the Internet, I can not stress how much that plays a role these days... they weren't strictly forced to cast from just there.

I'm not holding the production to it but I'm still hoping for some "for the dub fan" casting choices like Skip Beat had.

And while I'd mention Skip Beat as well, I'm still waiting to hear it. I kind of even forgotten I backed now.

This idea of disregionalized dubbing also happened recently inthe Hyouka dub; After hearing one of the most distinct voices in anime. Three words uttered... "Oh, oh, it's Lisa Ortiz! In a bit role!"

I sadly get excited by some of the smallest things.
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Punch Drunk Marc



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:28 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'm sure that's what they try to do. I'm only speculating though.

I know someone asked Christopher Bevins on Twitter a few months ago if they were going to get Rachelle Heger to reprise her role as Sucy in Space Patrol Luluco and I think he said something along the lines of that they didn't have enough to money to fly her down for it.

Then there was the whole fiasco with people being upset about them not getting Amanda Winn-Lee to come back asx Rei Ayanami in the Eva:Rebuilds and replaced her with Brina Palencia (who imo did a great job) even though they pretty much got the rest of the main cast.
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MarshalBanana



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:33 pm Reply with quote
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.
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Primus



Joined: 01 Mar 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:41 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
why haven't I seen Johnny Yong Bosch on Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal


Here you go.

Quote:
but they're the only studio I know of that regularly straddles two locations like that


Almost every modern Ocean dub records in both Vancouver and Calgary/Edmonton. The only ones that aren't like that are the Alberta-only dubs likes Card Fight Vanguard and Future Card Buddyfight.

I know Karl Willems used to fly out to Calgary to direct those dubs, but it seems like since they've started to get more work again he's been staying put in Vancouver.

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.


The vast majority of LA dubs aren't union.
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KutovoiAnton



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:58 pm Reply with quote
DerekL1963 wrote:
This is a consequence of the US being different from Japan and many other (physically smaller) countries. The US doesn't have One City to Rule Them All - a city that's a center of government, finance, commerce, business, culture, etc... And these cities usually contain a significant portion of the population - the Greater Tokyo region has almost a third of Japan's total population! (The greater New York metro area, the US's largest, by comparison contains just 5% of the population.) We're spread out across a larger landmass and are largely an aggregation of regions rather than one country depending from a concentrated center.

Folks pointing out those exceptions shouldn't forget they are exceptions, not the general rule.


Actually, Japan has it as well - there's a number of Osaka-based-voice actors. They've been voicing old SNK games and local TV programs.

It's also the same in Russia - foreign movies are dubbed either at Moscow or in St. Petersburg.


Last edited by KutovoiAnton on Mon Oct 02, 2017 3:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
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