Forum - View topicNEWS: Bayonetta Voice Actress Calls For Boycott of Bayonetta 3; Cites Poor Pay From Platinum Games
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BadNewsBlues
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Even if she says that if she violates the NDA if it’s still in effect and she gets taken to court over it and loses she’s screwed monetarily depending on the damages. |
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Vickey Cheese
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I'm worried she may not be in the most sound of mind right now given her talk about mental illness and suicidal thoughts. If she's truly so down as to not care about any of the future consequences of her current actions then I feel kind of bad for her. I'm not justifying her behavior but if she truly feels hopeless in life and with no options other than to go for a hail mary burning of the bridges play then that's very sad. |
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Vee-Tee
Posts: 133 |
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Oof. $4,000 for a game that’s going to make millions and no royalties… That sucks and I feel for her. I don’t care for the series and I don’t believe boycotts work, but it’s sad to hear that the original voice of the character gets shafted like this.
From what I understand, voice acting work in the UK is very much freelance and not terribly well paid unless you’re voicing over commercials. American anime studios tend to hire Americans who can do the accent, though correct me if I’m wrong and there are British VAs working in the US. (I believe the actress for Seras in Hellsing is English?) And yeah, $4,000 would not cover much in today’s economy. It’s about £3,500 and that would not cover a rent or mortgage payment in a metropolitan area. For reference, my own wage working at a university is £24,000, meaning that before taxes, pension and national insurance contributions, I take home £2,000 a month. So 2.5 months’ wages sans contributions was what was being offered to this voice artist. I most definitely cannot afford to live in a city like London and Bayonetta’s original voice actor would not have the steady income I have as a contracted full-time employee. Pretty sure celebrity VAs get residuals and blank cheques for putting on a bland performance of a cartoon character (not mentioning anyone in particular…), so why can’t the same be true for voice talent who are actually talented at using their voices to create characters, while celebrities just get paid to come in the booth and do bugger all except maybe put on a bit of a New York accent… Last edited by Vee-Tee on Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:14 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 359 |
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That's a pretty nihilistic take on things. I mean, you're acting as if no one's going to react to this when that's already provably false if you even take the slightest look at reactions from people around the internet. Will it get her back into Bayo 3? Almost definitely not. Will it torch her career? Possibly. But will things in the industry change? Only if people act like this and totally ignore what's going on. People speaking up about problems is how change starts and hopefully stories like this or McCarley's can get that ball rolling. |
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everydaygamer
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The problem is the lack of information. You can say $4000 isn't a lot, but we have no context regarding how much voice actors usually make. What was she paid for the last two games, and how many hours of work would this have been? We can't have change if we don't have a good understanding of the problem first. |
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Ryuji-Dono
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On one hand, I support Taylor in getting a better payment and transparent treatment from PlatinumGames.
On the other hand, her comments towards Jennifer makes me slightly dillute my sympathy for her. It reeks of entitlement, like she owns the character even though it's not always that way. |
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Vee-Tee
Posts: 133 |
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Well… David Hayter voiced Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid games for years, and many people prefer his performance over Kiefer Sutherland. Would Hayter being disappointed by the recast count as him being entitled to the character? He still does the voice at cons and enjoys MGS fan-art and such. I can bet that he probably would have taken Helena’s stance if Kojima Productions/Konami decided to shaft him like that during the release of one of the 2000s-era MGS games. |
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Ryuji-Dono
Posts: 1231 |
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Yeah, but I haven't heard of David Hayter downright disavowing Kiefer as the voice as far as I'm concerned. |
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Vee-Tee
Posts: 133 |
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Well, people generally don’t discuss wages as a weird social rule (you should, this taboo only really benefits bosses who can short change their employees). Just understand that for a lot of VAs, it’s a one time job. You get the pay for the day, you leave and go to your other job. Which might be voice acting for another studio or, going home and managing your business, or even clocking in for a traditional office or retail shift. It’s not as well paid as you may think, and there’s also Union versus nonunion projects which I believe pay a little differently, but the latter is more favoured by certain dubbing studios. Being paid a flat rate as an ‘independent contractor’ and not working as a contracted employee for Funimation or Ocean Group or whatever means you don’t have a stable income. That $4,000 earned by Helena could easily be vacuumed up by rent and mortgage payments, car payments… and there’s no guarantee that another monthly salary is forthcoming. As an employee at my university, I know that if my car breaks down, I can pay to fix it and even if I have just £100 in the bank for a week to live off, it’ll be topped up by my salary at the end of the month. VAs in Helena’s circumstance don’t have that luxury. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
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Last edited by Cardcaptor Takato on Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:43 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Vee-Tee
Posts: 133 |
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He was certainly upset about it and did some vague tweeting circa 2013.
Source: https://levelskip.com/action-adventure/Why-David-Hayter-Was-REALLY-Replaced-in-Metal-Gear-Solid-V-The-Phantom-Pain So if David is allowed to make a bit of a stink about not being recast, why not Helena? She’s putting her career on the line here in a small local job market and hoping it gets people talking about VA wages. There are VAs all over Twitter bringing up how poorly they are compensated for roles… some of the voice artists in Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (which made nearly $200 million USD worldwide) were paid only $150-300. That stinks and needs to change, especially as the cost of living continues spiralling. Last edited by Vee-Tee on Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:36 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Ryuji-Dono
Posts: 1231 |
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That's beside the point. And some people that Taylor follows are... very unsavory to say the least, but let's not delve into that. |
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Fedora-san
Posts: 464 |
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To be fair a lot of VAs do that. You go to any voice actors Twitter account and a lot of the time their banner is usually just a college of character they voiced and they try to claim exclusive ownership over the character and act like they're the actual character and they have the authortive voice to speak for them. Even VAs who had their roles recast like 20 years ago. VAs claiming ownership of characters is nothing new. I also think it's unprofessional but it's just the kind of fan culture we have.
I don't see anything wrong with Jennifer Hale supporting her employer who is defending her by saying Taylor is lying about the situation and slandering Hale in the process. Seems perfectly fine to me if Taylor is not being completely honest with the situation and Hale and Kamiya don't have the benefit of not caring about being able to break NDA to clear things up at the moment. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
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Ryuji-Dono
Posts: 1231 |
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The thing is that we still don't know the full circumstances behind the replacement, since this doesn't reach "Penny-pinching" territory because Jennifer Hale is not the type to be called a scab VA. So better wait and see. |
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