The Harmony Gold Dub & Broadcast Audio Discussion Thread

[superrayman3]

Zedaki doesn't sound Japanese at all. I am kind of shocked that you thought it did. If you ask me, it's more like a Basque word.

Actually if you think about it Zedaki is one of those names that can go either way in terms of whether or not it sounds Japanese.

[DerekPadula]

Hi everybody. I have an update for you on the HG dub.

I called Harmony Gold a few more times over the last week, and finally spoke with Tommy Yune today, January 17, 2012, at 2:55 pm. I asked him some follow up questions and tried to get more information about the dub.

We talked for about 10 minutes and I obviously couldn’t ask him all the questions I wanted, so I’m going to do a follow up email and he’ll try to answer them or forward them to people that he thinks can help.

Keep in mind the following statements are not exact quotes, as I was writing things down by hand during our conversation. But I write quickly and did my best to capture every word, so if not precise, the meaning is still there.

Harmony Gold Archival Tapes
On the issue of the archival tapes, Tommy is “99% sure the videos are gone forever. Usually TOEI will ask for expired license materials to be sent back to them. So we either sent it back or it disappeared somewhere else.”

He said, “When we lost the license and FUNimation had it, we probably either sent the dub’s back to TOEI or sent it to FUNimation because it was their license then. So it’s possible that either of those companies is sitting on them without even realizing it. That happens a lot more than you think, as it did with Robotech and Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, with its original dub done by veteran voice actors, the non-Hollywood actors version.”

Also, in the 80’s, Harmony Gold’s office was located on Sunset Blvd. Then they moved sometime around the early 90’s to their current location in a different building on Sunset Blvd. and some of the tapes weren’t brought over. Then, while in the new building during the mid 90’s a water main burst under Sunset Blvd, flooding the archive room and ruining a lot of tapes, primarily the Robotech series. Luckily they were able to find another set of the Robotech series so that they could remaster it. The ruined tapes may have included Dragon Ball.

Therefore his recommendation is to try and find the 1 inch U-matic tapes that were sent to television stations. Some of them were never returned to Harmony Gold after the show was cancelled. Some were destroyed. Some were lost. “Try to find the lost ones. There are people out there that collect these kinds of things, and this is what happened in some cases with Robotech. Although once DVD’s came out, the need to hold onto tapes was reduced, and people stopped caring about them, so there may not be many left.”

If you guys know the TV stations where they aired, it's possible that they still have the tapes in their archives. Start calling them!

Furthermore, Tommy said that Intersound Inc. did the Harmony Gold dub, so the people who worked there at the time may know more. They closed in 2006. Might be worth finding out who the staff was on the dub and tracking them down.

The Harmony Gold Audio
Even more interesting, he said that if we can compile the audio for him, he will try and contact FUNimation and deliver it to them.

That’s right. Tommy will send FUNimation the Harmony Gold dub audio!

Tommy said that “The license to the video images now belongs to FUNimation, but the recorded Harmony Gold audio still belongs to Harmony Gold.” Even though they still own it, the audio has no value because they can’t sell or make money off it. “The audio rights have no use to us at all. I’d be happy to contact FUNimation and offer them the audio. It would make for a good audio extra on their DVD. With FUNimation’s case they just might not know who to contact, so I’ll initiate contact and send them a memo, letting them know we have the audio.”

Challenge to Daizex!
So then, anybody here up for the challenge? Whoever has the tapes, can you please record all of the audio and then send it to me? Then I can deliver it to Tommy and maybe it’ll end up on an official FUNimation release!

Please record it in the highest quality possible. Then PM me and I’ll give you my email so we can coordinate together.

Keep in mind that while Tommy basically runs Harmony Gold now, his statement that they still own the rights to the audio, and his casual offer to send it along to FUNimation, does not mean that we can post complete audio files on YouTube or anywhere else. It’s still their legal property!

By the way, a little bit of a correction on the SAG actors back in the day, as mentioned in my previous post in this thread. Tommy said that he’s not entirely sure if they were SAG back then, maybe they were and maybe they weren't, but that he believes most of them are probably SAG actors NOW. Nevertheless, he did repeat that FUNimation didn’t hire SAG actors during their dub because it was too expensive.

In fact, union requirements may complicate having the Harmony Gold dub audio on a future FUNimation DVD release, because if they were union back then, they would still have to pay them union residuals today when the DVD’s are sold. If they weren’t union back then, it should be easy to include. And there’s very little chance of fans being shocked or preferring the HG dub and being upset, because the FUNi dub is so well established. So really, FUNimation has no reason not to include it.


Questions
Daizex, here are some questions Tommy would like answers to that hopefully you guys can answer.

Who was the producer of the Harmony Gold Dub?

Likewise, who was the producer of the Mexican Harmony Gold Dub? He had not heard of this dub before.

Did the credits of the Spanish dub mention Intersound Mexico as the dubbing company? If so, Tommy can find out if Harmony Gold helped produce the show in Mexico or simply farmed it out.

Challenge No. 2: Can somebody who has the tapes please type up the credits and provide the complete list? I can forward the list to Tommy and he’ll see if knows any of the people. Some of them are still probably in the industry and so he’ll reach out to them. This means I’ll have an opportunity to speak with them or have the questions answered through Tommy. And that means answers for you guys and the solving of the mysteries that surround this dub.

Lastly, I’m also going to be sending him a list of questions on my own, so please write down any questions you’d like answers to and I’ll include them in the list.

Thanks.

[superrayman3]

Thanks for the update DerekPadula i'm actually surpprised by Tommy Yunes proposals and am glad that he's so open about the idea of giving Funimation the HG dub to release, I also have a question for Mr. Yunes and my question is this: "If you were given tapes that had the episodes with both the audio and video would it be possible to send that to Funimation so they could include the actual episodes themselves as an extra instead of just the standalone audio?"

[kei17]

Thanks for the great pieces of information DerekPadula!

Did the credits of the Spanish dub mention Intersound Mexico as the dubbing company? If so, Tommy can find out if Harmony Gold helped produce the show in Mexico or simply farmed it out.

Here are the ending credits in the Spanish dub:

Version al español por: Video Doblajes, S.A. de C.V. Mexico
Voces: Elsa Covian, Laura Ayala, Ernesto Casillas, Ricardo Teuedo, Ana Maria Grey, Olga Donadio, Jorge Santos, Alejandro Illescas, Gerardo Rellero, Yolanda Vidal, Eduardo Borja, Gerardo del Vall, Guillermo Romo, Andres Gutierrez, Adriana Galzada, Jose Luis Castaneda, Gabriel Berthier, Armando Coria, Alfredo Camacho, Irma Carmona
Adaptación: Adriana Rodriguez
Dirección: Rafael Rivera
Asistante de dirección: Olga Donadio
Ingeniero de grabación: Eduardo Trejo
Ingeniero de regrabación: Raciel Rios
Musica y efectos: Luis Alberto Serrano
Edición: Raciel Rios
Coordinación: Irma Cuautla, Gustavo Nava

I guess these names lack accent marks like ó since they didn't use them in the credits.

[linkdude20002001]

DB M1 OP Credits
Produced By: Toei Animation Co., LTD., Japan
Directed By: Ahmed Agrama
Written By: Ardwight Chamberlain
Producer: Yokio Hayashi

DB M3 ED Credits
Original story by: Akira Toriyama
Original Version Directed By: Daisuke Nishio, Kazuhisa Takenouchi
Music Composed By: Shunsuke Kikuchi, Takeshi Ike
Original Lyrics By: Yuriko Mori, Takemi Yoshida
Executive Producer: Frank Agrama
Executives in Charge of Production: Norman Siderow, Kathryn Nelligan
“DRAGON BALL” Theme By: Kathryn Nelligan
Additional Music Supervised By: Randall Rumage
Executives in Charge of Post Production: Ahmed Agrama, Kent Harrison Hayes
Production Manager: Oscar I. Diaz
Post Production Coordinator: Fabiola Stevenson
Chief Engineer: Bryan J. Rusenko
Featuring the Voices of: Betty Gustafson (Barbara Goodson), Wendee Swan (Wendee Lee), Clif Wells, Jeffrey Platt (Michael McConnohie), Myron Mensah, Colin Philips (Dave Mallow), Reba West (Rebecca Forstadt), Carole Wilder, Ryan O’Flannigan (Kerrigan Mahan), Penny Sweet (Edie Mirman), Ray Michaels (Mike Reynolds), Christy Mathewson (Eddie Frierson), Bob Papenbrook, Wanda Nowicki, Jamie Johnson, Ted Lehman, Barry Stigler, A. Gregory (Bill Capeze)
A.D.R. Recording: Eduardo Torres Tornero
Remix Engineer: George Bours
On-Line Editor: Stephen Miller
Video Tape Operators: Jorge Allia, Hugo Olguin
English Version Recorded At: Intersound, Inc. (Hollywood, CA.)

Music Copyright Information

1989-09-29
Title: Dragon ball.
Type of Work: Music
Description: 1 sound cassette.
Notes: Music & lyrics.
Theme by Kathryn Nelligan.
From the motion picture soundtrack.
Copyright Claimant: Gold Screen, Inc.
Date of Creation: 1989
Date of Publication: 1989-09-29
Authorship on Application: Gold Screen, Inc., employer for hire.
Names: Nelligan, Kathryn
Gold Screen, Inc.

1989-10-27
Application Title: Dragonball.
Title: Dragon ball feature : opening theme / lyrics and lyrics arr. by Kathryn Nelligan.
Type of Work: Music
Description: 2 p.
Copyright Claimant: Gold Screen, Inc.
Date of Creation: 1989
Authorship on Application: Gold Screen, Inc., employer for hire.
Other Title: Dragonball
Names: Nelligan, Kathryn
Gold Screen, Inc.

[Ashura]

One thing I'll mention; I tried to contact Kent Harrison Hayes (http://www.kentharrisonhayes.com) with a polite email asking about the Dragon Ball dub, and received no reply.

The problem with the audio as it is currently is that it's not complete, and the only part that exists is the movie.

My assumption -- also -- is that the 2 movie parts we have are actually one movie, much like the Spanish version.

[DerekPadula]

Challenge accepted, and challenge achieved. Nice job, guys!

kei17, this is awesome. I'll forward this to Tommy and see if he knows any of these people.

linkdude20002001, thank you for taking the time to write up all that information. I'm sure that took a lot of freezing of the TV.

Thanks for the question, superrayman3. I'll ask Tommy. My guess is that he would say yes and give them to FUNimation, since he has nothing to lose, but there may be legal issues with doing so. Let's see what he says.

Ashura, Kent was listed as one of the Executives in Charge of Post Production, so maybe Tommy is familiar with him and can get us in touch. Did you have specific questions you wanted answered?

I noticed that in the English dub most of the actors used pseudonyms. Tommy mentioned that this might be the case, because this is how SAG actors got non SAG jobs. They used fake names that were not affiliated with SAG. This implies to me that the dub was not actually SAG even though many of the actors may have been, and therefore this should not cause problems for FUNimation.

By the way, Derek Padula is my actual name, so you guys can just call me Derek.

[Ashura]

Hi Derek,

I picked him since he was on post production and probably had a decent hand in working on the show. I pretty much just asked if he minded us asking him questions and if he possibly kept a VHS of anything Dragonball related in his personal collection. This was about a week or so ago, and I heard nothing back. (Though to be fair, who knows how often he checks that email.)

I didn't want to bombard him with questions and scare him off, especially since he was the one name in the list I could find contact info for. He's also been active in a lot of Harmony Gold's recent works (like Shadow Chronicles) and I'm pretty sure it's the right guy.

I think one person who would be great to be able to talk to would be Ardwight Chamberlain, since he was the script adapter and he probably has more info than anyone what went into localizing the show and why choices were made.

[DerekPadula]

Yeah, I noticed on Kent's site that he worked on Robotech: Shadow Chronicles, so perhaps he and Tommy are still in touch. Seems likely.

I'll ask about Ardwright.

[Ashura]

Just to mention, he might be harder to get into contact with, if only because he was pretty well known for Babylon 5 for a while. I have no idea if that fandom treated him well and what his interaction with 'fans' is like. I hope they treated him well, but it wouldn't be the first time overzealous fandom has scared people off.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I got to say, I'm impressed at just how much info you guys have been able to uncover. This is getting interesting...

[VegettoEX]

I got to say, I'm impressed at just how much info you guys have been able to uncover.

Just another day in the Daizenshuu EX community .

But seriously, all folks have to do is ask, and 'round here everyone's pretty willing to info dump whatever you need!

[linkdude20002001]

Derek, could you perhaps at some time ask about their dub of Dr Slump? Even less is known about that than their dub of Dragon Ball. I've only seen one episode, and the ending didn't even have credits... It was just a textless version. Maybe they didn't air it on TV...? Or maybe what I saw was something from Harmony Gold that leaked out?

[Ashura]

Just so people know what's going on, I tracked down information on the 3 TV stations which may have aired the show and sent that to Derek. I don't want them bombarded with calls, so I sent that info to him privately. I think we're better off if one or two people were to call there.

I also updated him with what exact materials have been uncovered and exist currently in the hands of fans, so we can try to pool it all together in the end and he can send it to Tommy.

I guess it's not been openly requested, but if any fans lurking here DO happen to have materials related to this dub and are willing to share -- even if it's just a missing segment -- please PM one of us. You will remain anonymous, and it will all go toward sending the most complete selection of material back to Harmony Gold.

I think we've gotten pretty much as an official request to track the materials down as possible with Tommy's email, so if you're willing to push in your recording of movie 3 -- or at least the missing segments of it -- into the pile, Mike, we may be able to at least give HG a 90% complete version of those movies. I'll try to break down what we have after work today for everyone in the thread; it's public knowledge but the two HG threads here are so long it's pretty hard to follow.

[DerekPadula]

Tommy gave me some info about the cast, prior to my sending along the credits lists you guys provided above. I haven't checked yet to see how it matches up.

"I looked at the voice actor pseudonyms, and here's their actual names (where known)

• Betty Gustafson = Barbara Goodson
  Wendee Swan = Wendee Lee
  Clif Wells = Clifton Wells
  Jeffrey Platt = Michael McConnohie
  Myron Mensah = ????
  Colin Philips = Dave Mallow
  Reba West = Rebecca Forstadt
  Ryan O'Flannagan = Kerrigan Mahan
  Penny Sweet = Edie Mirman
  Ray Michaels = Mike Reynolds
  Ted Lehman = Tad Layman
  A. Gregory = Bill Capizzi (deceased)"

He also said that the Harmony Gold archivist (who previously worked at Intersound for 20 years) checked the vaults and confirmed no records in their current inventory of Dragon Ball. This means they do not have the tapes. This is a great opportunity for us, the Dragon Ball community, to provide them with what we have available.

Furthermore, he said, "We've done business with the Funimation folks before, so let me know if they need clearances to use the Harmony Gold audio tracks as DVD extras. Since Ahmed Agrama directed those English tracks, I'll ask him his recollection of working on that version."

Good to hear Tommy is so open to helping out with this. And Ahmed Agrama seems to have used the name "Frank Agrama" during the dub's production, as this is the name listed in the credits.

Lastly, "I keep in touch with them regularly and am having dinner with a bunch of them on Friday if you want me to ask any questions."

So there you go!

Speaking to Daizex...

Yes, I agree with Ashura. Please contact either of us and let us know what you have available. We can coordinate together and figure out the logistics of how to get them to Tommy. He'll then give them to FUNimation.

linkdude, I added a question about Dr. Slump to the list asking for any available information on the dub.

I didn't have time to make calls to the radio stations today because of work, so I'll do those tomorrow.

I have all of my questions ready and am sending them now, but feel free to add more before Friday evening and I'll forward them along.

[Super Sonic]

Kerrigan Mahan huh? Who did he do? Mainly know him for voicing a Power Rangers villain named Goldar.

[Ashura]

Thanks again for posting that info, Derek.

So, what exists between members of the community mostly deals with Movies 1&3...

Here's what's found so far:

1.) Large chunks of movie 1&3 (Legend of Shenron/Blood Rubies & Mystical Adventure). While this was thought to be two movies before, looking at the Spanish dub it seems instead that it's intended to be one very long movie with connecting dialogue.

Footage wise, here's the state of things:

-The Movie 1 segment is missing the very beginning narration before the credits, and some of the opening theme song.
-Movie 1 is more-or-less complete up until the very end, where some of it is cut off.
-It then cuts into the Movie 3 segment. It is missing a large big chunk of the beginning.. namely the scene where Tsurusennin and his peeps talk to Pilaf and his gang.
-The opening credits used are the second opening mixed with some footage of movie 2 (Sleeping Princess); it's also creditless which is very rare.
-The ending credits exist, but they seem to lose music sync. This would not be hard to fix, though.
-The audio is mono, and is output to only one side.
-The audio itself is very slightly out of sync.

2.) A complete copy of the Zero Y el Dragon Magico Movie VHS.

Footage wise, here's the state of things:

-We have a somewhat good quality VHS that has been transferred and preserved digitally.
-It is a compilation of Movies 1&3.
-At least for the Movie 1 segment, it is almost frame-by-frame the same as the Harmony Gold English dub. Yes I checked this myself.
-Some of the foley seems to be lifted straight from the Harmony Gold version.
-There is connecting dialogue dubbed in between movies 1&3.
-It contains a good quality recording of the Harmony Gold theme song.
-It is mainly good we have this so we can figure out how the missing chunks of the English movie are actually edited.

3.) VegettoEX apparently has the third movie in some form. We do not know what form it takes or if his copy is even complete. It could be a stand alone version, or his might be only a chunk as well. Hopefully he'll let us know what state it's in at the very very least, and what's there/missing.

4.) There is a completely re-edited, progressive version of the first movie chunk that I created earlier this year using DVD quality footage.

Footage wise, here's the state of things:

-The movie portion of movie 1 is pretty much perfect; it's ivtc'd to 24fps and uncompressed.
-The audio has been fixed and leveled. It's only mono, but it sounds fairly decent and I fixed it so it comes out of both sides.
-This has a custom opening and ending I created, since the one used on the real broadcast was hard to replicate at the time. I'm in the middle of re-creating a textless version of opening 2, but I may reach out to the community for help.
-I actually do this kind of stuff for a living, and I am fairly certain if we can get at least the missing audio segments I could completely remaster the movie into something actually commercially viable if we're not able to locate a better master. This is a 'worst cast scenario.'

Ideally, 'here's the sources, here's a DVD quality version' gives us a better chance with Funimation than 'here's 100 pieces, we want you to spend money to fix something you probably don't care about for a random DVD extra.'

I think before we send these along, at the very least we need to try and find the missing scene between movies 1 & 3... the missing narration at the very beginning isn't necessary to make it watchable, though if we can find that too it would be great. If not, I guess what we have is what we have.

Currently, we have absolutely no leads on the episode versions of anything Harmony Gold.

[linkdude20002001]

And for the record, the first episode or Dr Slump that was uploaded to YouTube long ago was complete aside from lacking the opening and next episode preview (which it may not have had for the English version). And as I mentioned before, it was oddly creditless... It makes no sense to me. :/

[DerekPadula]

Hi Ashura. Thanks for doing all that hard work of the comparisons. I just watched the films and can confirm everything you mentioned.

And you know what, I really LIKE this dub. With the exception of Launch, Roshi and Krillin, I think the voices are much better than FUNimation's. Primarily because they sound natural and not forced, like FUNi's. Professional voice actors FTW.

Anyway, in regard to what we're doing here... I don't want to stop you from cleaning up the footage we have available because I think that's a great idea. But it may be wise to wait until we hear back from Tommy after his dinner with the staff on Friday. It's possible that more footage will come in as a result, including complete copies of the movies. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it would stink to have to do all that work again.

And if we can't find the missing pieces, what we have is worth sending along anyway. Ideally the HG dub footage would be added as a video extra on a DVD or Blu-Ray alongside the FUNimation edition of the movie. People would already have the full movie, so the HG dub would simply be a nice bonus and piece of archived history. It doesn't have to look perfect. And maybe FUNimation would even clean it up a bit. Who knows. That's my thinking at least. Do what you think is best.

Tommy's on it and knows what we're looking for, so we have to cross our fingers and see. I'll also call the stations you sent me the info on. Thanks.

[Ashura]

Hi Ashura. Thanks for doing all that hard work of the comparisons. I just watched the films and can confirm everything you mentioned.

Anyway, in regard to what we're doing here... I don't want to stop you from cleaning up the footage we have available because I think that's a great idea. But it may be wise to wait until we hear back from Tommy after his dinner with the staff on Friday. It's possible that more footage will come in as a result, including complete copies of the movies. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it would stink to have to do all that work again.

Hi Derek;

Trust me, I wouldn't be able to finish it before Friday let alone begin on it; All the video stuff I've done on the boards pretty much waits until I have free time from work. I was mainly talking worst case scenario... and if they can secure a complete master, then that's far more ideal than us piecing together scraps.

I have a feeling if we call the TV stations and they by some chance still have the masters, btw, they will probably only release them back to Harmony Gold. (As it should be.) Just make sure you're honest when you talk to them. I think we'll probably not turn up much with the tv stations, but it's worth a shot.