This
convention has a habit of attracting large numbers of dub actors, and
2006 was no different. From left to right, the group is Dan Woren,
Samantha Inoue Harte, Jonathan Klein, Jamie McGonnigal, Patrick Seitz
and Tony Oliver. The bookends of this group cover most of the
contemporary history of anime dubbing; Woren and Oliver were the lead
performers in the roles of Roy Fokker and Rick Hunter in the original
Robotech dub, and they've stayed active in dubs since then. Woren has a
role in the recent Gun Sword dub and Oliver just finished directing the
Gankutsuou - Count of Monte Cristo dub.
"I
still get paid to do this, and I'm happy to be hanging around," Woren
told fans. "It is acting, and you need to make sure you have a firm
basis in acting - just because you have the voice doesn't mean you can
act." Nearly two decades after the Robotech dub, the Fokker role
remains one of Woren's favorites, "...because it was for real," he
recalled. "It was like an on-camera role. It was very much an acting
challenge to be believable with the character...and to have that
challenge to not sound like it's a soap opera or a bad cartoon."
Robotech was a job and a paycheck for Woren in those days, and while he
worked hard on the role, no one could have imagined in the 1980's that
their dub work would still be celebrated in the 21st century.
While
Oliver's well known for Hunter in Robotech, "...the biggest response I
ever got to a voice was when I played Lupin," a role that has had
several actors in Lupin III dubs controlled by various U.S. companies.
Lupin doesn't sound like Hunter, and deliberately so, since voice
actors need to have multiple voices in their arsenal. "You'll probably
find you can do more voices than you think you can. If you can't, they
don't call you back." Oliver said he was one of the performers who
hoped to to what the industry calls "face work" in movies and TV,
actually making a film titled "Alley Cat" early in his career. "It was
a really bad movie and I was really bad in it," Oliver recalled. With
no film work ahead, he learned that "...you can't make a living in L.A.
on the stage." "I was getting ready to quit the business, and that's
when Robotech showed up - and I realized people didn't want my face,
but they wanted my voice."
Patrick
Seitz, a familiar presence in West Coast dubs and the ADR director of
the KaMiChu series, said he got his acting start in high school under
an old martinet of a teacher. "We had this really good work ethic
because she worked us into the ground," he said. After college, "I
moved to L.A. and I was horrible." But Seitz' career changed when he
took some voice over classes, then responded to a trade paper ad from
New Generation Pictures, which was looking for dub performers. The
audition and demo tapes worked, and Seitz has had steady work since
then, both acting and directing. What are the feelings of a dub
director who controls the sound of a major production? "I have to
direct this person, and I don't know how to make this person do this,"
Seitz answered.
Jamie
McGonnigal, a New Yorker, sticks to acting. "I never was educated," he
said. "I grew up doing musical theater - when i was a kid I did Evita
when I was ten." Growing in the world of the summer stock musical led
to more musicals, and contact with musical actors who were doubling as
dub actors. That led McGonnigal to a role in the Barbarian Moron online
animation (which is still on the Sci-Fi Channel web site), and then to
anime dubs. On his favorite role, McGonnigal said "I could play Takeo
from Magic Users' Club forever. It was the first role I did - he's
funny and cute." McGonnigal keeps getting dub roles because he's
dependable and directable, which means he can make the best out of odd
instructions. He recalled a show when he was expected to make nothing
but camel noises, yet sound as if he was talking to someone and making
sense. In another show, he had to play a clown that does nothing but
laugh, and he got the sounds just right. "Then they started calling me
in for every laughing character," he remembered.
Harte
had a similar experience when she was recording lines for the
Americanized version of one of the Final Fantasy video games. The owner
of a high-pitched voice, Harte was first called in to play one of the
chicken-like chocobos, and says the game's producers felt sorry for her
and asked he to perform all of the chocobo voices - and then all of the
cactaurs, too. "I ended up going into shock, because I love the
characters - I loved the job." Harte also has progressed to the
point that she's playing villains, including "...a zombie - you get to see
me go flying through the air." And she still tells the story about how
she got into acting after she began as an animator and artist (which
Harte still does) and a producer said that her "annoying voice" would
be perfect for an anime character.
The
seeming non-actor in this group would be Klein, who has directed some
of New Generation Pictures' best projects. But Klein also is a trained
actor, training that he got when he was studying film direction at the
University of Southern California. The school insisted that its
directing students also study acting to learn what actors experience,
and took a couple of years of acting classes. While Klein said he
learned dub directing by watching accomplished actor-directors such as
Crispin Freeman and Taliesin Jafee, he was able to take advantage
of what some might consider a shortcoming - he was told that he had a
"nerdy voice" and started using that in dubs. I do a lot of animals'
voices - I do a lot of odd characters. It's fun."
This
convention has a habit of attracting large numbers of dub actors, and
2006 was no different. From left to right, the group is Dan Woren,
Samantha Inoue Harte, Jonathan Klein, Jamie McGonnigal, Patrick Seitz
and Tony Oliver. The bookends of this group cover most of the
contemporary history of anime dubbing; Woren and Oliver were the lead
performers in the roles of Roy Fokker and Rick Hunter in the original
Robotech dub, and they've stayed active in dubs since then. Woren has a
role in the recent Gun Sword dub and Oliver just finished directing the
Gankutsuou - Count of Monte Cristo dub.
"I
still get paid to do this, and I'm happy to be hanging around," Woren
told fans. "It is acting, and you need to make sure you have a firm
basis in acting - just because you have the voice doesn't mean you can
act." Nearly two decades after the Robotech dub, the Fokker role
remains one of Woren's favorites, "...because it was for real," he
recalled. "It was like an on-camera role. It was very much an acting
challenge to be believable with the character...and to have that
challenge to not sound like it's a soap opera or a bad cartoon."
Robotech was a job and a paycheck for Woren in those days, and while he
worked hard on the role, no one could have imagined in the 1980's that
their dub work would still be celebrated in the 21st century.
While
Oliver's well known for Hunter in Robotech, "...the biggest response I
ever got to a voice was when I played Lupin," a role that has had
several actors in Lupin III dubs controlled by various U.S. companies.
Lupin doesn't sound like Hunter, and deliberately so, since voice
actors need to have multiple voices in their arsenal. "You'll probably
find you can do more voices than you think you can. If you can't, they
don't call you back." Oliver said he was one of the performers who
hoped to to what the industry calls "face work" in movies and TV,
actually making a film titled "Alley Cat" early in his career. "It was
a really bad movie and I was really bad in it," Oliver recalled. With
no film work ahead, he learned that "...you can't make a living in L.A.
on the stage." "I was getting ready to quit the business, and that's
when Robotech showed up - and I realized people didn't want my face,
but they wanted my voice."
Patrick
Seitz, a familiar presence in West Coast dubs and the ADR director of
the KaMiChu series, said he got his acting start in high school under
an old martinet of a teacher. "We had this really good work ethic
because she worked us into the ground," he said. After college, "I
moved to L.A. and I was horrible." But Seitz' career changed when he
took some voice over classes, then responded to a trade paper ad from
New Generation Pictures, which was looking for dub performers. The
audition and demo tapes worked, and Seitz has had steady work since
then, both acting and directing. What are the feelings of a dub
director who controls the sound of a major production? "I have to
direct this person, and I don't know how to make this person do this,"
Seitz answered.
Jamie
McGonnigal, a New Yorker, sticks to acting. "I never was educated," he
said. "I grew up doing musical theater - when i was a kid I did Evita
when I was ten." Growing in the world of the summer stock musical led
to more musicals, and contact with musical actors who were doubling as
dub actors. That led McGonnigal to a role in the Barbarian Moron online
animation (which is still on the Sci-Fi Channel web site), and then to
anime dubs. On his favorite role, McGonnigal said "I could play Takeo
from Magic Users' Club forever. It was the first role I did - he's
funny and cute." McGonnigal keeps getting dub roles because he's
dependable and directable, which means he can make the best out of odd
instructions. He recalled a show when he was expected to make nothing
but camel noises, yet sound as if he was talking to someone and making
sense. In another show, he had to play a clown that does nothing but
laugh, and he got the sounds just right. "Then they started calling me
in for every laughing character," he remembered.
Harte
had a similar experience when she was recording lines for the
Americanized version of one of the Final Fantasy video games. The owner
of a high-pitched voice, Harte was first called in to play one of the
chicken-like chocobos, and says the game's producers felt sorry for her
and asked he to perform all of the chocobo voices - and then all of the
cactaurs, too. "I ended up going into shock, because I love the
characters - I loved the job." Harte also has progressed to the
point that she's playing villains, including "...a zombie - you get to see
me go flying through the air." And she still tells the story about how
she got into acting after she began as an animator and artist (which
Harte still does) and a producer said that her "annoying voice" would
be perfect for an anime character.
The
seeming non-actor in this group would be Klein, who has directed some
of New Generation Pictures' best projects. But Klein also is a trained
actor, training that he got when he was studying film direction at the
University of Southern California. The school insisted that its
directing students also study acting to learn what actors experience,
and took a couple of years of acting classes. While Klein said he
learned dub directing by watching accomplished actor-directors such as
Crispin Freeman and Taliesin Jafee, he was able to take advantage
of what some might consider a shortcoming - he was told that he had a
"nerdy voice" and started using that in dubs. I do a lot of animals'
voices - I do a lot of odd characters. It's fun."
