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Hey, Answerman! [2008-06-06]

Something I was thinking of regarding English anime voice actors -- The US Animation scene is pretty similar.

Check out a number of the animated series through the years, there's a good chance you'll see a few names that pop up in near everything: Rob Paulsen, Tress MacNeille, Frank Welker, Nancy Cartwright, Maurice LaMarche....they're likely somewhere in your favorite cartoon.

I get the feeling that animation, no matter where it's done or how its done, can be a close-knit group at times. You get a few talented people who can do a lot of voices (The Simpsons and The Muppets comes to mind), and you see less and less reason to look elsewhere.

TZN: Do you think that there's much difference between the regular voice-over acting we think of, like being Porky Pig, versus, doing overdubbing or ADR (automated dialogue replacement or additional dialogue recording) for anime or for airline or broadcast movie retakes?

BERGEN: Well, acting is acting. It still has to be believable. The technique is different. With anime, with dubbing, you have to do several things at once. You have to read the line, match the sync, and act all at the same time. And quite often, the restrictions in anime that you have to fit the sync basically takes the acting freedom away from you. You have to act under their parameters.

TZN: How do those demands affect your performance?

BERGEN: The restrictions of staying in sync from somebody else's performance do hinder your creativity. You're not able to give the performance of what YOU would do, because you're limited to the parameters of matching sync. That said, you have to be a superb actor to be able to do that because you're not able to be as creatively free as you would in, say, an American animation. And I think anime actors are some of the best voice over actors out there because of this. The sad thing is that they're not paid for their expertise. They should be paid, I think, double what American animation pays because of all the restrictions and all the technical nuances that you have to perfect.


TZN: Do you think there's such a thing as voice actor typecasting?

BERGEN: Sure! There's also studio typecasting. "He does a lot of work for Disney. Well, we don't want him over at Hanna-Barbera." "Well, he does a lot of work for anime. We don't want him for animation...for American animation." Because people think, "Oh, this is what you do, and this is what you do well, so therefore you probably shouldn't or couldn't do anything else." This is also why a lot of anime actors have a difficult time breaking into American animation. Because the American animation people are saying, "Oh, we don't want that 'anime' sound." These people don't realize that anime recording is so specific, unique, and difficult to do that if you put a script in front of those actors, they can still act without having to dub.

But it's difficult. Once you get established in a certain area, it's very difficult to break out. It's like a soap opera actor. A guy in a soap opera who'd love to do a sitcom. "I'm sorry, but you're just a soap actor." Person on a sitcom trying to do a feature, "Well you're just a television actor." It's easier nowadays for TV actors to do movies, but you still get typecast. It's not just in voiceover, it's everywhere.

About the "tell and not show" question, John over AnimeNation got the same question and posted an interesting and pretty detailed response.