Do American and Canadian voice actors dislike each other?

Be forewarned: most of this is a long-winded way of saying, "Gee, I dunno, but I don't think so." :)



Yeah, I think I misread your original post (or was just going on the title of the thread without context). Apologies for that if there were any misunderstandings.

From what I understand, almost all anime work is non-union. At the very least, most anime dub jobs do not pay residuals -- actors get a session fee and that's it, whether the DVDs sell 10 copies or 10 million. The notable exception I know of are Disney's Miyazaki dubs. I'm also not as heavily into anime as some, but it seemed to me that Geneon was the major anime firm that did their dub work in Vancouver. FUNimation and ADV all seemed to source their work out of Texas, and Bandai and VIZ seemed to work out of California or New York City talent. There are a few names and studios that seem to have disappeared from anime credits now that Geneon is no longer operating directly in the States.

It is true that the National Film Board of Canada subsidizes a lot of animated work in Canada, which lowers costs of production in general, although I don't know how much that affects just the voice acting aspect of the animation process. I also can't really tell if Lee is complaining about entire productions moving to Canada or just the voice acting aspects of it, but she is definitely saying that moving productions over the border forces her to take more non-union work just to make ends meet. "Runaway production" was a pretty big deal at one point, but lots of American cities are now offering tax incentives and logistical support for on-camera work, at least.

Animation in America (at least for entertainment purposes -- most animation studios and voice actors make their real money doing advertising) is either big-budget feature films or TV shows. The feature films are all either name-brand (=> union) actors or it's Pixar, which does their work domestically as well. TV shows (which is really Lee's stock in trade) can be imports as often as not, but I think there has been an uptick in domestic animation since Lee gave that interview (it's dated from 2002 -- another thing to keep in mind when trying to generalize based on her comments), and most of that work seems to be done stateside.
 
I don't know off hand if the anime dubbing standards in Canada are different from the US, I know there is less of barrier to between doing pre-lay and dubbing work in Canada.

Well its true that most voice actors get their work from commercials, most don't like the other work going to someone else, hence the dislike of animated movies being voiced by famous movie stars.

I read an interview by Tony Jay years ago, right before he died, where I think he made off hand comment about disliking voice work that is shipped to Canada. Now I can't find this interview off hand, it was an imdb link from 4 years ago.

Anyway I would actually argue that there are more cartoons being imported from Canada more nowadays then in the past. One of the most popular shows on the Cartoon Network was imported from Canada. Of course unlike anime, these shows are already in English and don't need to be dubbed and of course Canadian cartoons will always use Canadian casts.

Also I can think of a recent example of cartoons that were voiced and even animated in Canada to save money. Originally the pilot for Yin, Yang, Yo! was voiced and animated in the US. Disney decided it was cheaper to have the voice and animation work done in Canada, which it was. So the American voice cast, was replaced by a Canadian one, despite the fact the pilot was done in America, that could leave sore feelings.

Plus there are still some new shows, like the new Iron Man cartoon, where they decide to go with a Canadian cast right off the bat. Not mention even companies like Viz use Canadian talent for certain projects, the voice cast for Death Note was Canadian.

Now I think most those pre-lay projects are union supported, but that wouldn't matter to American voice actors who are still having work taken away from them.

That's why I think there could be some tension between the two.
 
I seriously don't see the problem.

So, what's if it's cheaper or something like that, the bottom line is that you're doing the voice acting job right or if it's fun.
 
Tony Jay was in Reboot... which was recorded in Vancouver. So I kind of doubt he said that. He might have, but I doubt it. Though on the other hand Reboot was also produced and written in BC, so maybe the American voice actors see that as different. I don't know.

Actors generally don't blame eachother for accepting work, though. From my understanding it's in very poor taste to blame the other actor when you don't get a part.

Really I think the resentment is aimed more at the concept of the outsourcing and at the companies who are participating in it (because it's cheaper and not because they want better acting). Rather than say Steve Blum going 'oh that Scott McNeil, he stole my Wolverine role. If I ever see him at a convention I will refuse to sit with him and be rude and unpleasant.' or people blaming Canadian animation studios for getting Canadian talent to do the voices.

And of course you have to consider the fact that many actors have worked in both major cities. Sue Blu was a voice director on Beast Wars, Tony Jay was in Reboot and Andrea Romano voice directed the show for it's first two seasons, David Kaye's been getting a lot of work in LA lately.
 
That's irrelevant to my point, he lives in LA now, that's what matters. This is outsourcing issue, not just pointless jingoism. If Tara Strong gets a role on cartoon series, they are not going to resent her, because every other role is still up for grabs. If the entire show is outsourced to Canada, none of those roles go to people in LA.
 
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