Forum - View topicNEWS: Japanese Voice Actors Win In Court
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icepick314
 Posts: 486 Location: Back in the Good Ol' US of A |
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about time they get paid for their work....
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Gamelore
 Posts: 76 |
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The article doesn't go into detail.
Is it standard for voice actors to receive royalties? Is it required that they receive them? I'm not sure if the studio was wrong for failing to adhere to some Japanese law that mandates royalties to voice actors, or if the studio was clearly violating a contract. |
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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GATSU
Posts: 15568 |
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It's nice to know the Japanese respect voice actors better than SAG.
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LordRobin
Posts: 354 Location: Akron, OH |
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Hmm. That averages less than $2200 per performer. I'm glad that they won their case, but it doesn't seem that they won it for very much...
------RM |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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It's probably a precident-setting thing, not unlike various actors have done here-Jackie Cooper for kid actors or whqatever that was, Peggy Lee(?) & Disney over Lady & the Tramp. The money may not be all that important. Our pay scale for actors has improved from the dark ages, but it's usually taken legal moves, I believe. Most big companies aren't giving anything away they don't have to.
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FubaredByAnime
Posts: 4 |
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Here are previous articles that were mentioned by ANN before in chronological order.
animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=4322 animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=5416 animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=6950 So based on the info, this is money that was owed to the actors based on contractual agreement, not on precedence. |
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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And isn't that what Peggy Lee tood Disney to ct over? That she wrote songs for Lady & The Tramp & was supposed to get money for the future releases & Disney argued she didn't?.
Why were they in court if it were so clear-cut? Obviously the studio thought they had a leg to stand on not paying the actors, that the court would side with them. Yes, things are different in Japanese society, but all businesses around the world have unspoken issues. Where I work at they interview the sworn officers when they leave the department & the biggest complaint is the unpaid overtime--to complete the job, one has to work more than the standard 40-hr week so the choice is poor performance reviews or unpaid overtime. I regularly work a couple hours unpaid overtime every week just to keep my head above the water. It just gets worse whenever they cut the budget & we lose staff. |
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Onizuka666
Posts: 266 Location: U.K |
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I'm very happy japanese voice actors got a better deal. Now if japan can just give their animators the same kind of treatment and we can all surely have much better anime, safe in the knowledge that when we invest in a series everyone is getting a fairly cut deal.
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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GATSU
Posts: 15568 |
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Mohawk: Considering they didn't want to support the pay terms for videogame voice acting, and make it force voice actors to go under nicknames to be able to do certain work, I disagree.
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Andromeda
Posts: 119 Location: Florida |
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Um, actually, SAG actors - ALL SAG actors, not JUST voice actors - already aren't supposed to act in any project that isn't a union project, once they've joined the union. That has nothing to do with descriminating against VAs, it's just the union policy in general (a stupid one, I think, but one done to ALL members nonetheless). The use of pseudonyms hardly seems to hurt VAs. You can still tell that the same guy plays Spike Speigal, Roger Smith, Shishio, etc., without him having the same name. Also, while they can't work under the same name as their SAG projects, many times everyone knows it's the same actor; SAG can't be THAT stupid, so obviously, they're gracious enough to just look the other way. Again, weird policy, but it's hardly specifically discriminatory towards VAs. -Andromeda |
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opimus
Posts: 1 |
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Does the mean studios will have royalties to the actors for overseas sales? The studios could tell the US producers to put out only dubs so they don't have to pay any royalites.
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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The alias thing isn't just SAG, not when some of these guys have a dozen names. Some of it is the actors themselves. I've seen them use multiple names in the same title(to make it seem more actors are being used?) & I've seen Wendee Lee directing as Wendee Lee & act under an alias in that title.
Voice work in the past carried a certain taint--real actors could get real work in front of the camera. Big movie actors would do commercials in other countries, but not in their own because is was seen as something like prostituting themselves out-knock out a commercial for the money. When I was much younger I remember Hal Linden appearing on a talk show(Mike Douglas or Merv Griffin to let you know how long ago it was) about the joys of dubbing foreign films. That the pay was dirt & they only hired 2 or 3 actors-not always a female, so sometime you had 2 males doing all the parts, but it put food on the table when times were tough between jobs. Most unions have a negative image of "scab" labor--they have to to maintain their power. I recall an interview in Newtype with someone from the Spirited Away dub that carried that "scab labor" attitude--that the union labor is so much more talented than the non-union VA's. Considering that wasn't all that long ago, obviously those opinions likely are still to be found. Unions are also scary, self-perpetuating creatures. They often have a pretty solid lock on employment. My late husband had 3 months from being hired at a union grocery store to join the union & we were warned if he ever lapsed in his dues, he would be fired. My union, in debating the contract one year, sneaked a clause in that we can only quit in June, although we can join anytime. When I discovered that clause, I went over every flyer they put out in the campaign & that was never among the things they said they were fighting for. On the other hand, most people at my work who do belong to the union say they joined for the protection the union can offer in disciplinary actions. SAG has to offer their members something or why should people join? Once in awhile one sees positive comments, more often from people who have experienced the joy of dubbing foreign work as opposed to those who primarily voice American product. The usual comment is it's a skill not all actors can master due to the difficulty of dubbing n existing work rather than having it animated to match the VA. |
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