 |
Sakura Con - Saturday - Voice Actors
 The Saturday
voice acting panel at Sakura Con featured a mix of familiar names and people
who were new to conventions. Tristan MacAvery (left) and Tiffany Grant
(right) have been at a lot of conventions. "You have to live where the
work is going on. You can't live in Kansas and be a Broadway star," said
Grant, who lives in Houston and specializes in ADV Films' dubs - although
she has appeared in a couple of feature films produced in Texas (including
the artistically successful Arlington Road). Grant was passing out flyers
for one of those films, the independently produced Laughing Boy. |
 Pamela Lauer,
who was the Kei in Dirty Pair to Jessica Calvello's Yuri, made her first
convention appearance at Sakura Con. There are some odd stories about the
energetic recording sessions the two had for the Dirty Pair series, but
Lauer said it was still disciplined work. "We could change lines but it
still had the same meaning," Lauer said. |
 Doug Smith,
who made perverts fashionable as the lead character in the six-episode
golden Boy series, is the classic case of the non-actor actor (he started
as the tape box designer for ADV Films and still has that job). "They can
say you're too silly to play a serious part. I plan on attacking that,"
said Smith,. who wants to grow as an actor. |
 Sandy Fox is a tiny person with a tiny voice, but that timbre is in demand for dubbing in Los Angeles, especially where the roles call for children and babies. It's the sort of high pitched voice in the style of Japanese female voices that also has led her into anime dubbing. "You want to keep the integrity of the original Japanese film," she said. While Fox has a big resume of voices in American and Japanese cartoons, she's competing against A-list actors who are being recruited for those roles. "They get cast because they're celebrities," she said. Fox has now set up her own fan club where she is making pictures and music CD's available to members. |
 Actor and singer Lex Lang recommended that aspiring actors make a demo tape of their voice range (he does dozens of voices and specializes in mimicking celebrity voices for dialogue replacement work). To those fans who dislike dubs, he said that art form has improved and will continue to get better. "There was some anime that was dubbed by people who didn't care. That's changed a lot. The producers and directors have gotten more exact." |
|
