Experience with voice actors

[Piccolo Daimao]

This is something that I've been thinking about for a while, but I was just wondering about some of the lists that people had made in other threads about dream recasts for the Dragon Ball anime, whether it be for the original Japanese, FUNimation or Ocean.

But how can you really know whether or not a voice actor will work well in whatever role they're given, with their vocal range, performance ability and whatnot? And how do you know all these people? I know I probably sound quite naive at the moment, but I don't know half as many voice actors, notable or not, as I do "normal" actors (e.g. Sigourney Weaver, Bruce Willis) in the business. Perhaps that's because I don't watch much anime, let alone actually note down or bother to look up the people that voiced them. I don't even own nor have I ever watched the DB/Z anime in its entirety.

I tried to make a list for a potential dream English dub recast a while ago because I was bored and wanted to experiment a bit, but then I ended up over-thinking and realizing just how inexperienced I was with this kind of stuff. It's not something that I ever really thought about until now, yet I still want to do it anyway. Is there something wrong with me? Maybe it's some kind of distraction from whatever else is clouding my mind with stress? This isn't the place to get too personal about my problems or whatever, but I just felt it was worth mentioning a little.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Well, Piccolo Daimao, your observations are not stupid in the slightest, so don't be embarrassed about it! No, none of us have a way of knowing if an actor will do a good job before they are cast...casting directors simply try to make the best educated guess they can based on auditions. However, regardless of their experience in dealing with voice actors, fans have far more influence than they used to.

I'm a voice actor myself, and I write/voice a weekly audioblog about the business of voice acting/voice-over. A few weeks ago, I published an entry which noted that, as time goes on, fans have developed an increasingly powerful presence with regard to the voice acting business. Waaaaaay back when it first started, fans had no influence whatsoever, because voice acting was a fairly anonymous art. That's how many producers wanted it back in the day. For example, back when Walter Disney made "Snow White," he forbid Snow White's voice actress, Adriana Caselotti, from appearing in any other media because he wanted to minimize the awareness of Snow White being a role played by an actress. He wanted, to the best of his ability, to maintain the illusion of Snow White as a character, as an entity of purity and innocence. He was concerned that if too many people thought about Caselotti's performance, their focus would be less on Snow White, and more on, "Snow White, as played by Adriana Caselotti."

Flash-forward a few decades to the mid 90's, when "Dragon Ball Z" first aired on television, and the voice actors were credited...but not specifically to the roles they played. The credits just said, "Featuring the English Voices Of"...and then listed the actors in a seemingly random order. Which actors played which roles wasn't fiercely guarded, top-secret info, but it wasn't info that was readily available. To find out who played who, fans had to do their research online (usually by going to fansites like DBZ Uncensored), send out some emails, and ask around.

Flash-forward a few more years. Due partially to the increasing awareness of the job (and also to changes in laws), voice actors in anime dubs are credited to specific roles. On top of that, high-speed internet connections become readily available, fast enough to deliver VO audio over the internet. This opened a floodgate for people to enter the industry. All of a sudden, to remain competitive, it became necessary for voice actors to have home studios, and they were no longer for just the top 5%/super-rich voice actors. A veteran colleague of mine told me that in 2005, there were about 500 people who claimed the title of "professional voice actor," and over the course of five years, that number jumped to 125,000. All of this to say...the job is continually getting less and less anonymous as time goes on.

With that lack of anonymity, we have seen fans affecting the business. The prime example that I cited in my audioblog entry was the case of "Silent Hill 2," a video game that was recently re-released in HD with voice acting that had to be re-done by a different cast due to legal issues with the old cast. The very nasty four-way war between the fans, Konami, the old cast, and the new cast only ended when Konami and the old cast reached an agreement for their audio to be included in the HD re-release alongside the new cast. If the fans had not expressed such powerful anger over the internet, nothing would have happened. The chain reaction that resulted in the old cast's inclusion was started by fans. All of this to say, yes, people who aren't directly involved in the voice acting industry are having an increasingly powerful effect on it, due in large part to the fact that the job is not at all anonymous anymore.

What do I think of this? Well, fans gaining more power and influence over the years has led to mixed results. I'll start with the negative so that we can end on a good note with the positive.

On the negative side, I don't like the idea that fans--people who (for the most part) haven't done any voice acting, cast any voice actors, or directed any voice actors--are gaining more political power in an industry that they don't have experience in. To be clear, I have no problem whatsoever with fans thinking positively or negatively of certain performances. We're only human, so we can't help it if we have opinions! I just don't like the idea of an industry being affected on a political level by the need to appease people. I don't think a casting director should have to be second-guessing themselves by worrying what the fans will think, because they have no way of knowing what fans will think ahead of time. They shouldn't be burdened with the thought of, "Well, I like this voice actor...but will the fans like them too?" A casting director, for better or worse, should rely on their research of the subject material, and their own judgement, when deciding what actors to cast in a project. I don't like that the greater influence of people who are not directly involved with voice acting is causing people who are directly involved to second-guess every artistic decision they make.

Like I said, that's the negative, so I'll end on the positive. While I don't like that fans may cause the adaptation process to be more of a political effort grounded in appeasement rather than an artistic effort, I genuinely believe that anime licensing/dubbing companies began releasing uncut, bilingual releases of their properties largely because of fans. Furthermore, I think dubs have gotten insurmountably better over the years because fans have publicly expressed a strong desire for them to be better, and for them to be more faithful to the original Japanese version. Rather than "re-versioning" an anime property, most dubs are now actively trying to create faithful English emulations of the original source material. Thanks to fans, and how vocal they have been, their has been a general sense of marked improvement in how the anime industry conducts itself.

So, that leaves us with a rather interesting discussion to be had. Regarding FUNimation's treatment of the three "Dragon Ball" animes, especially in comparison to how they treated Kai...to what extent was it FUNimation's responsibility to do what they felt was right as a company, and to what extent was it FUNimation's responsibility to please its customers? Customers who, to complicate the issue even futher, are very divided in whether they prefer the subbed version or the dubbed version. For that matter, the many different English dubs out there.

EDIT: Oh boy.....now I'm kicking myself because I think I may have just talked and talked and talked while misunderstanding what you meant. If that's the case, ignore everything above. ......Did you mean, how does one go about making a "dream cast" list? Like how does one go about deciding what voice actors they'd like to see in what roles? Well, for me, I believe that all actors have a specialty. We're trained to be as diverse as possible, but ultimately we excel at a particular character type. So, while I won't be making a public dream cast list, I would make mine by finding a voice actor who has experience at effective portrayals of a certain character type. For example, for a character like Freeza, I would look for voice actors who have played arrogant, sophisticated psychopaths before. After that, it would be just a matter of what performance sounded better in my head. That's nearly impossible to do, though, which is why I have a hard time making dream cast lists myself. I would need to hear the different voice actors that I thought of actually audition. I would need to hear what voice they would use, how they'd go about their delivery of a couple different lines, that kind of thing.

[Piccolo Daimao]

EDIT: Oh boy.....now I'm kicking myself because I think I may have just talked and talked and talked while misunderstanding what you meant. If that's the case, ignore everything above. ......Did you mean, how does one go about making a "dream cast" list? Like how does one go about deciding what voice actors they'd like to see in what roles? Well, for me, I believe that all actors have a specialty. We're trained to be as diverse as possible, but ultimately we excel at a particular character type. So, while I won't be making a public dream cast list, I would make mine by finding a voice actor who has experience at effective portrayals of a certain character type. For example, for a character like Freeza, I would look for voice actors who have played arrogant, sophisticated psychopaths before. After that, it would be just a matter of what performance sounded better in my head. That's nearly impossible to do, though, which is why I have a hard time making dream cast lists myself. I would need to hear the different voice actors that I thought of actually audition. I would need to hear what voice they would use, how they'd go about their delivery of a couple different lines, that kind of thing.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Nonetheless, your information on the history of voice acting gave me some interesting insight into the business.

Personally, sometimes I only really know certain voice actors from, like, one role that they've done in a series I like. For example, Peter Kelamis. I only really know of his work in Dragon Ball Z and Ed, Edd 'n Eddy. Furthermore, sometimes it can be hard to determine whether or not, if there's something wrong with a character's portrayal, it's the fault of the voice actor themself, the direction, the script, or a combination of these factors.

[Majin Boo]

Direction and such can matter a lot. There's been a good number of voice-overs that are pretty bad despite having talented VAs. Star Ocean 4's dub comes to mind.

Dubbing things over creates problems to begin with, because you have to match the mouth flaps. Lots of people thought Yuna in Final Fantasy X was annoying for pausing a lot during her sentences, but that wasn't the VA's fault; she had to do it that way. (It never really bothered me that much personally, and I think it somewhat fit since she was kind of depressed during the game.)

[Piccolo Daimao]

Dubbing things over creates problems to begin with, because you have to match the mouth flaps. Lots of people thought Yuna in Final Fantasy X was annoying for pausing a lot during her sentences, but that wasn't the VA's fault; she had to do it that way. (It never really bothered me that much personally, and I think it somewhat fit since she was kind of depressed during the game.)

I know dubbing's not exactly easy, but I thought there'd be some way to circumvent that obstacle by now.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Personally, sometimes I only really know certain voice actors from, like, one role that they've done in a series I like. For example, Peter Kelamis. I only really know of his work in Dragon Ball Z and Ed, Edd n Eddy. Furthermore, sometimes it can be hard to determine whether or not, if there's something wrong with a character's portrayal, it's the fault of the voice actor themself, the direction, the script, or a combination of these factors.

Yup. Sometimes it's bad acting, sometimes it's that the script is so bad and there's only so much an actor can do to save it, and sometimes it's that the director completely missed the point. The key is to look for what's out of place. For example, if an actor puts on a performance that is inconsistent in quality, that's usually a tell-tale sign of bad directing. It means the director doesn't really know what they want (or don't particularly care). The director won't know what aspects of a performance to emphasize. So there's a lot of the director saying, "Umm....okay, emphasize X, now emphasize Y, then emphasize G."

Scripts can be a bit self-defeating in anime dubs. On the one hand, we understandably want the scripts to be faithful, but on the other hand, translating them too literally may force the actors to deliver their lines in strange ways in order to fit the lip movements. That's why I'm of the belief that lines need to be rephrased for dubs. Not rewritten, but rephrased, just so that it'll flow more naturally. For example, if the line is, "We have to leave!" and they change it to, "We gotta get outta here!"....then strictly speaking, yes, that's a "changed line," but since the meaning is so similar, I don't consider it as such. So finding ways to rephrase the lines and make them more conversational is key. I think a big problem with the 4Kids uncut dub of "Yu-Gi-Oh" was that, in an effort to appease the fans who wanted a dub loyal to the original version, the writers tried too hard not to adjust the lines too much. The dialogue may be more accurate in the uncut dub, but the dialogue--I found--generally sounded more natural in the edited dub.

One of FUNimation's earliest arguments about their treatment of the Z dub was that it was "impossible" to translate the original dialogue into English. They were, however, using translations that translator Steve Simmons called, "rather haggard." Furthermore, I think many episodes of their Kai dub proved that they can write dialogue that, while re-phrased, isn't re-written.

Dubbing things over creates problems to begin with, because you have to match the mouth flaps. Lots of people thought Yuna in Final Fantasy X was annoying for pausing a lot during her sentences, but that wasn't the VA's fault; she had to do it that way. (It never really bothered me that much personally, and I think it somewhat fit since she was kind of depressed during the game.)

I know dubbing's not exactly easy, but I thought there'd be some way to circumvent that obstacle by now.

Also something I wrote about! Check this video out (but make sure your speakers aren't too loud).

What you just saw was the result of a software program in development called "Video Rewrite." It uses CGI to revise the on-screen visuals to make it appear that the character on screen is lip-synced to the dubbing actor. In other words, somebody dubbed the line, "Video Rewrite gives lip-synced movies," and then Video Rewrite made President Kennedy's lips look like he was saying that line. This technology is still in development, and very expensive, but when mass-produced, it will eliminate the need for dubbing actors to lip-sync their characters.

That's a long way off, though. In the mean time, dubbing technology has come a long, long way. At first there was no method of accurate dubbing at all. Actors weren't even shown the visuals. They were just told, "This line is about 3.5 seconds, so make your delivery as closest to that as possible." It was horrendous.

Then the "three beeps" method was invented; the actor hears three beeps, and then based on where the imaginary fourth beep should be based on the rhythmn of the previous three, they say their line then. Disney took this a step further with their dubs of the Miyazaki movies. In addition to the three beeps, they also have a stationary, vertical line towards the right end of the screen, and a vertical line on the left end that scrolls towards the right--when they intersect, the actor's supposed to start talking. Furthermore, *all* of this is now faster since things went digital, and people aren't reliant on laying everything to film.

Then we have the French method of dubbing, the "rythmo-band." Rather than cue the actor with beeps, the engineer takes a blank strip of film and writes out the revised dialogue by hand onto the film strip. This film strip, the “rhythmo-band,” is then projected onto a separate TV screen beneath the main TV screen that shows the visuals that the dubbing actor will dub. Towards the left end of the rhythmo-band screen, a static red line is projected. As the visuals of the main screen move along, so does the rhythmo-band. Because the engineer took the time to precisely calculate how long everything should be pronounced, and adjusted the size and length of their handwriting accordingly, the rhythmo-band’s text scrolls from right to left in sync with the picture, and the dubbing actor simply reads the rhythmo-band’s moving text as it intersects with the static red line. Here's some behind-the-scenes footage of the French dub of Pokemon...fast-forward to the 3:29 mark.

That process has since been digitized as well, with software programs designed to mimic the rhtymo-band's function and work in sync with audio editing programs like Pro Tools.

So technology has come a long way, and it's only going to get better. Still, these things take time.

[Piccolo Daimao]

Hmm, interesting. I look forward to the day when this technology will finally be at his final stage and widespread.