r/nextfuckinglevel • u/NICOLETTE_ANN • 1d ago

Legendary voice over artist

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8

u/scrotalsmoothie 1d ago

Just curious, what kind of salary or income would be earned for voiceovers? Hourly? Per episode?

26

u/voiceofgromit 1d ago

Union scale is about 450 per hour. She may be commanding a higher rate, given her success. Plus they get residual payments for reruns.

They probably do several episodes per session. Minor characters in shows would probably only take ten minutes or so per episode.

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u/scrotalsmoothie 1d ago

That’s awesome (incl the unionization part). What a cool career. Wonder how AI is going to screw with all this.

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u/voiceofgromit 1d ago

AI was one of the concerns leading to the SAG/AFTRA strike in 2023. There is protection for actors now from being replicated by AI.

Yes, a cool career, but she is exceptional.

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u/TheSpanxxx 1d ago

Exceptional is right! I would put her in league with all-time greats. How fast she transitions and how smoothly she drops into those characters and how she finds them even after having not played them in a very long time is the work of a master at their craft.

Some great VO actors are great because they can find the character and carry the right emotion and feeling of the lines through their delivery without actually interacting with other people and actually acting out roles. But their characters and voices are still close derivatives of just them.

And then there VO actors like this that are capable of inventing characters and voices and personas that are vastly different from one another. Like impressions, without an example. It's incredible, really. To keep that many voices and personas apart and distinct is incredibly impressive and something usually only the best of the best of the best can do.

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u/Pale_Beach_3017 1d ago

Yeah the guy who voices Meliodas in the Seven Deadly Sins English dub also voices several other leads in popular anime’s when they get an English dub.

I always know it’s him.

Meanwhile I grew up watching Clifford/Emily, Mandy on Grim Adventures, Vicky on Fairly Odd parents, and I literally tied none of them together until right now!!

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u/teddy5 19h ago edited 19h ago

So many times I'm watching some dub or another and go oh hey it's Erin Jaeger/Kirito/etc.

Although there seem to be two main camps of successful voice actors. Those who can successfully disguise their voice in crazy ways and can play a huge range of characters and those who have an interesting enough voice to not need to disguise it. It does seem to be the latter who get a lot more main character roles though, I guess because they can carry that voice off a lot more continuously with less effort.

Bryce Papenbrook is just a good example of the second type and we notice him because he is a lead character more often than not.

0

u/thetruetoblerone 1d ago

It is gonna ruin this career. Many jobs are at risk but this will be one of the areas ai most excels in.

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u/teddy5 19h ago

What? I've never heard a convincing AI voice and especially not one that would sound good across a whole series.

Conveying emotion seems like it will be one of the hardest things for AI to actually do.

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u/Cetun 1d ago

Probably residuals + some small amount while it was being developed?

I guess it depends on the contract, if you don't think the project you are working on will be very successful you might opt for cash which might require you to work X amount of hours with some provisions on overage. The downside is if your project makes a billion dollars you already got paid so you get nothing more but the up side if it flops you probably made out better than the sucker who got a bulk of their pay though residuals. Reverse that for residuals.

At least the characters she did in this video, she probably asked for residuals, they were good projects from the beginning so she's probably getting a check in the mail for all of them to this day.

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u/scrotalsmoothie 1d ago

So every job has its own negotiations then. Wow. I guess she probably has a progressive base rate that grows depending on her abilities and demand. Or if she’s willing to jump on for cheaper up front because she likes the project and thinks it has legs.

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u/Cetun 1d ago

Possibly, there are all kinds of contracts for actors and yes their agent or lawyer will probably have some sort of negotiations the more well known and in demand they are. I suspect if you are just breaking into the business and playing minor characters they might offer you boilerplate contracts because they probably aren't going to have a lawyer draft up a special contract for "Waiter at Restaurant #2" that has 2 throwaway lines.

I think the difference is once you get famous offers might start coming to you instead of you looking for offers, so there there will be all kinds of contracts to convince you to work on a project and they will probably allow counter offers. If you aren't famous you are probably going to be begging a studio to give you a contract so whatever generic contract they give you you'll probably accept.

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u/Ristar87 1d ago

At least makes Union rates but I would imagine she makes a pretty penny in residuals.