It was almost 10 years to the day, I took my first steps into another dimension. It was gray. The walls. The halls. What looked like an office building actually housed recording studios. Of all shapes and sizes. Now, those first steps alone have changed my life more than any I’ve ever taken. Standing in the lobby, my feet still hurt from the ill-sized shoes I wore for work earlier that day. My best friend Tony told me they needed voice actors where he worked. And now, in a few minutes’ time, I’ll be interviewing for the next 10 years of my life.
His name was Martin. He wore a fedora. The goatee said “Billy Joel fan”. That isn’t an insult. He was the gatekeeper. And his name isn’t Martin, but only for this article’s purpose. 10 minutes earlier I did good by bringing by a couple coladas and making sure the English Department staff took their shots. And now, Martin and I sit across from each other in the lobby. Basically, we just got along. And I was finally excited about something. Excited about something with zero anxiety. My feet still hurt is all.
We laughed, Martin and I, sitting there. Good laughs. We listed our favorite this’s and favorite that’s. Days later, I was again sitting across from Martin. This time at the semi-mythical La Carreta. I was officially being anointed a dubbing “director” over Marlboros, pork bits, and beers. By no means was I an actor. At least by my definition. I had experience. I had schooling. But “directing” was my new calling. And my aching feet were just fine with that.
At one point during the interview process, I was led through a door.
The big studio was Studio 5 (now split in half, tragic). It was the first studio on the left. Walking in it felt both impressive and intimidating. But there was a couch in this one, so, yay feet! Okay. Now, imagine commanding half a spaceship. Huge TV on wall. Two big monitors on either said of the desk. One for the engineer. One for the director. A separate isolation booth ran the length of Studio 5. You could watch the actor record their performance in a very theatrical way. The other booths were a fraction of this room’s size. Literally, this one was on another planet.
Normally, it was dark. The light fixtures dim. But there were scripts glowing green on screens of black. Time codes. Both in codes and out codes line the left hand side of the script. ProTools. The recording holy grail, industry standard software. And when Martin asked me and the other guy applying who wanted to try “directing”, I swooped into the opportunity, sitting down in the empty swivel chair and naively starting to co-pilot. Up key. Space bar. Up key. Edit text. Off I went like Dorothy and Alice.
I did some theater in my day, but these people, these “dubbers”, were actors. Real actors. I’d read about them in the newspaper dozens of times over the years. And now here I am, scrolling through a script and making sure what they say makes sense, making sure they start and stop when the gangster or animated banana starts and stops, and me, make sure their performance matches that on the screen in front of us.
That’s dubbing. And it’s an art form that goes largely unnoticed and heavily criticized. Every thing “we” know about dubbing is a Bruce Lee movie. Every thing “we” know about voice acting, anime. Sadly, most of this content will never be seen by the actors behind it. Unless it stars the latest Nickelodeon teen sensation and/or breakout SNL star. Anyway. It’s crazy, laying your voice on top of someone else’s. But to me, magic was moving into in our little world.
First time I tried VO, I was needed to cheer for 30 seconds. It’s called Crowd Work. Bottom of the barrel type stuff but incredibly necessary (you can still make a good buck or two off of it). The engineer in my ears tells me 2 seconds. 1 second. I start yelling random sports stuff, and then I began clapping. To my embarrassment, they had the clapping, the applause (they always do) they didn’t need mine. I was mortified.
But I was also bit.
Maybe I could be a magic maker like these people. I loved directing and recording, but as an actor you could crawl inside the screen. And for someone with my debilitating fashionable anxiety, I could perform in front of maybe two people tops and not like a whole audience. That suited me just fine. So I asked for every “Man 1” or “Cop 2” and yes, “Crowd Work” because to me, I was working up the magic making ladder.
The booth became my home. But what I hadn’t realized was I was leasing. By now, though, I could talk about a thousand shows I was in. And all the experiences I had as both someone who recorded and directed these things, and also someone who voiced twice as many. But this isn’t about my experience. It’s about all of ours’. Us, the voices. The ones who lose a parent and are sitting in the studio lobby the next day waiting to record one retake (one line of dialogue) because “It has to go out today!”.
I’m afraid that scenario’s fairly common. People assume since we can make so much money in so little time (and sometimes we can). But we can also be treated like garbage. On a regular basis, we’re made to feel like anyone can do our job. It’s even posted on studio walls advertising “no acting experience is necessary”. My home now threatened by each of the neighborhood bullies. By that I mean the studio heads. The CEO’s. And soon, the people who run other departments are just as willing to threaten to take your work away for only asking an innocent question.
There is one show I do want to talk about. A show called Avenida Brasil (or Brazil Avenue). This is the one you hope they’d all be like. Look, every show has its ups and downs (script problems, bad casting, time constraints), but it’s rare does the whole damn thing fit from floor to ceiling. It’s rare you know you’re working on something special while you’re working on it. This was one of those. I felt more like an audience member than part of the crew. The care and talent that went into this thing seemed otherworldly at the time. I was a very, very, very small part of it. It was already in production when I got there. I was lucky and spent a good deal of time in Studio 5.
And why? Well, the two leads in Avenida Brasil were powerhouses.
Their characters, Carmina and Nina, powerhouses. The two female voice actors hired to dub these characters, powerhouses. I “directed” both of them. And got to watch what were really 4 incredible performances. The two on the screen. And the two in the booth. Duh, I stayed out of their way. I found that’s real “directing” hence the quotations I include around the word director in this article. But if we needed another syllable to match a mouth flap, I’d be there for them. It’s imperative you hire real actors. Anyone can sync a line, but only the real actors can live it, too. Sure they may get grouchy from time to time, but don’t fire them or put them on a “don’t cast” list. It’s only because they’re sleepy from living their dream.
The rest of the cast of Brazil Avenue was literally filled out with award winning actors. One voice actor in particular even took on two roles. The male lead Jorjinho and the sometimes-slow-to-react Adauto. Normally, you wouldn’t utilize one actor for two roles, but because they had who they had to portray these two characters, it was another amazing session with another brilliant actor, who could not only technically accomplish what as a voice actor has to do to dub what they’re saying, but switch from two distinct roles as we’d have sometimes upwards of 7 episodes to record in one session. That’s 14 episodes playing two roles. The emotional marathon is real. And so were the tears, on both sides of the booth.
But, sitting there, taking everything in, I thought I made it. This wasn’t work. This was magic. And it was my job to keep appreciating what I’ve come to learn very few people do. These people, the voice actors, give a full time commitment to a part time gig. In the back of my mind, I knew something wasn’t fair about that. Unfortunately, the shiny veneer of voice acting began to crack with the first thought like that.
No screen credit. A voice actor can work a lifetime and still no one knows their name. And creating a name for yourself can mean potentially working the Cons/Signing events. I mean, a whole body of work can easily mean nothing to the world at large. Or even just within the industry. Again, oddly, it’s a job where studios consistently let you know you’re replaceable. There’s an old saying I’m going to straight up butcher: “You can take a great actor and turn a garbage script into gold. But you can’t take a garbage actor and turn a shit script into gold.”… Or something like that.
Here’s what I’ve seen. I’ve seen creative and humane atrocities take place on a plot of land I once worshipped. I’ve seen amazing 10 year veteran actors fired because a “director” that had been there only 3 months didn’t like something about them. And apparently CEOs go along with this gross, unprofessional behavior. HR departments gunning for people to “make examples out of them”. Casting departments who cast more out of spite than creativity. Even Script Departments complicate what’s easy and ignore what’s right. It’s not every studio. It’s not every CEO. But boy oh boy does it feel like it. I’m sure this behavior may even go unnoticed by the higher ups. I hope that’s the case.
These were people you smiled at and asked about their lives.
Maybe had a beer with that at one time. Smoked a joint together on Halloween. You’d see them in those gray halls, outside eating, having cigarettes. I’ll never understand why these people turn on the hate. It’s almost like this industry alone courts a certain toxicity of a person. Like it lies dormant until they step into this business. It’s both traumatic and bewildering. So much so that a few trips to the therapist may be in order. Not kidding. To be fired over nothing does irreparable things to a mind and heart.
It’s been 10 years since Avenida Brasil. In that time, the industry was in a boom. And I had a good run as a useful voice actor in town. I would do just crowd work, I love this job so much. You kind of have to though. You could be on top one minute with three leads in three shows, then at the end of the session, you gotta do some cheering. But back then it didn’t matter. I couldn’t get to the studio early enough, and I certainly couldn’t leave late enough. The triple coladas. Those flaky empanadas. The cigarettes. I couldn’t wait to record. As “director”. As voice actor. Get me to the next line. The next scene. The next episode. I met my wife here. Yep! She played Nina. (gasp!) The twist reveal!
I married the girl behind the girl. The girl in the booth. The girl who really represents a golden age. When the right people were in charge, the right actors were in the right roles, and it felt like we were all on the same team. However, recently, from our vantage point, weird professional vendettas, a complete lack of empathy, and a quickly eroding standard of quality dismantled the industry from the inside out. It got rusty. This magic machine running without the one thing it needs: magic.
But there’s time. The magic makers are still out there. They will come back. The suckers, they are. Because they, the suckers, are me. I’m them. Another magic-seeking weirdo in the bunch who can make silly voices into a microphone and somehow get paid for it.
