Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Some Voice Actors Like Not Knowing About Their Roles?
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4719 |
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On that last note about pay being a factor, it is worth mentioning that voice actors are usually only paid for time spent in the booth. Nobody is going to stop them from watching the subbed version of a show ahead of time, but they won't be getting paid for it either. Considering that most voice actors do other things to help pay the bills, it isn't hard to see why many don't spend hours on unpaid preparation. I remember one commentary in which it was mentioned that Clifford Chapin spent a lot of time delving into Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate to prepare for his role in Robotics;Notes, and while it helped with world building, essentially none of it mattered for his performance.
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MFrontier
Posts: 14715 |
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I know this article is talking about English dubbing, but it reminded me of a Haruka Tomatsu interview a while back where she talked about how she prepared for a role. If it was for a character from a light novel or manga, she usually read the source material, and if it was an original work she tried to be "straight-forward and feel what the words are trying to convey."
I also remember reading about how Sonny Strait often reads ahead for the stuff he's working on if it has an accompanying manga, like for One Piece. |
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WatchforMoons7
 Posts: 529 |
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I'm quite sure one reason is about pressure. Acting out for a character is an adventure itself.
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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I think one of the reasons many voice actors, particularly those involved with English versions of anime shows, seem to never have a chance to review the script material in advance could be that they're under serious time constraints...
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Aquamine-Amarine
Posts: 276 |
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This explains why English dubs turn me off. You can tell - especially if you had heard the original Japanese version first - that the English voice actors just don't seem to care. They don't fit the character at all, and don't even bother trying. Whereas the Japanese voice actors really put their all into it, even reading the original material if there is one. They take voice acting much more seriously than America does, and it shows.
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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Voice acting has never seemed like a fun job to me. Every time I play a sports game like Madden or NBA Live and they have the announcers calling the games for you, I always wonder how many hours those announcers had to spend in the booths recording each individual player's name, in probably three or four different inflections per player to match up with when they make good/bad/great plays, plus all the various calls about passing/shooting/scoring that need to have enough variety so the gamer doesn't get bored hearing the exact same "he shoots, he scores!" dialogue fifty times every playing session. I mean, that's got to be a pretty tedious process, and they don't even have the diversion of matching a story to their dialogue like an anime VA would.
And it is ideal to have a completed script to memorize in advance and plenty of time to prepare for a role, but Justin's right that the reality is often very different. I remember William Shatner mentioning that a lot of those famous pauses in his delivery of Captain Kirk's lines in Star Trek came from scripts that were often still being re-written the day of shooting, and trying to remember his lines on the fly when something he'd memorized the night before might have suddenly changed ten minutes before filming. |
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amagee
 Posts: 333 Location: Orlando, FL |
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I wonder if this kind of thing is any different with some of the newer voice actors and actresses getting into the business who are anime fans themselves?
Also, if I had to pick one voice actor who really seems to care and plan and all that jazz, it would be Crispin Freeman. Any time he's in a room with other VAs, he always has so much more to say about the depth of individual characters that he's playing or, sometimes, just other characters with which his role interacts. The best, however, is when he's been in interviews and answers questions with such complexity and passion that the interviewer is momentarily stunned by it (see The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya video interviews on the original discs as a good example). |
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D00dleB0Y
 Posts: 120 |
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I really like how you answer shitty questions like these but ignore more interesting questions like "Why aren't more Japanese anime featuring college students as the protagonists?" or "Could long-running anime continue to profit off low DVD sales?"
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Just-another-face
Posts: 324 |
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Oh please, here we go with this blanket commentary on English dubbing. Just don't care? Much more seriously than America does? You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. 
Last edited by Just-another-face on Fri Jan 08, 2016 3:27 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Raebo101
 Posts: 818 |
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Maybe it does to YOU, but to ME... nah, not really. I could chose from ANY NUMBER of dubs (Broadcast Dubs included) that would prove your statement false, buddy. Not only that, but when you take into account that English VAs are definitely getting paid less than seiyū in Japan, and that dubbers have to match those lip-flaps (something that seiyū don't have to worry about because THEY make the lip-flaps that English VAs have to build off of in the first place) and still remain emotionally charged, even when they screw up and have to do it over again, it's kinda amazing to me that we can even keep up with the seiyū. I mean, if you want an example, look at Space Dandy. Part of the enjoyment I get from watching Broadcast Dubs is knowing that the VAs have to work with stricter time-restraints (on top of everything else). They STILL give great performances, but those performances will often be ignored because the original Japanese versions are several episodes ahead. Why wait for the dub when people can just watch that, right? Last edited by Raebo101 on Fri Jan 08, 2016 4:15 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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AJ (LordNikon)
 Posts: 523 Location: Kyoto |
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I can't speak for American voice actors cause I don't think I've ever known any well enough to open up to me about work; but the few Japanese ones I've met over the years, I don't see as being too different from their English counterparts if in-deed this article is about American voice actors. A rather well known Japanese voice actor who will remain nameless as to not cause either of us any problems, had related to me shortly after meeting in Tokyo. It was during a long night of drinking when he related a few tales of his past jobs. He was far from an otaku and fell in to the job through a friend. It was just suppose to help pay the bills till he was able to get in to some stage work which never happened. It was the firs time I think I can recall ever hearing a Japanese person drop the "F-bomb" in my life, and it was first time since seeing Pulp Fiction that I heard the word used more than ten times in two minutes. My take away was that I would rather stick to working as a news writer and never look to move in to acting. My second take away is, there is no way in hell, I will ever bust my ass so hard for so little pay, and that I will never complain about my salary from the Post ever again. |
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SouthPacific
Posts: 689 |
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In Japan it's common practise to do stuff like reading the manga that the show is being adapted from, and it's not unusual to read this in interviews, that VA X found his/her character really interesting and that reading the manga/LN helped them get a grasp of what their character was like before going into voice recording.
In the US this seems to be a rarity and most VAs just seem to go into the booth, do their lines and then be done with it, which from my perspective shows a massive difference in how those VAs carry out their work and that ultimately that may/probably impacts the end result. |
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Paiprince
 Posts: 593 |
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Not sure if trolling. And the moment someone mentions "JP > US" voices you get the dub drones hounding on him. On average, there is a wide gap in skills and opportunities between these two groups. No doubt there are exceptions, but really as a collective dub actors just can't measure up. |
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DmonHiro
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While I don't want to star the dub-vs-sub debate for the 7651928th time, you're the one who's wrong. Does America have schools for anime voice actors? Do American voice actors sell CDs? Voice acting is taken WAY more seriously in Japan then in America. |
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Just-another-face
Posts: 324 |
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So you're saying we don't even take voice acting for our own cartoons and animated movies seriously? Nope, wrong. The fact you're so anti-dub doesn't help your case, by the way. |
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