Writers in the Recording Studio - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 101

rector to facilitate the process, but the writer still needs to be involved. No one
understands the characters and tone better than the writer.

Union or Non-Union
Professional voice actors in the United States belong to the Screen Actors Guild
(SAG) and/or the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).
Both SAG and AFTRA have interactive agreements. In the United Kingdom,
Australia, and New Zealand, voice actors belong to Actors' Equity. In Canada,

they're members of the Alliance of Canadian Television and Radio Actors

(ACTRA).
For union members to work for your company, your company needs to be a
signatory to the union. This costs nothing in itself, but down the line, if for any
reason your company decides to use non-union talent, they could eventually find
themselves in hot water. For this reason, game developers/publishers often contract
with production studios/entities who are themselves signatories. You can contact
SAG or AFTRA (or ACTRA) directly for information on rules and minimum fees
for actors.
The biggest benefit of using union talent is probably obvious. The best voice
actors in the business are union actors. This includes, of course, stars and celebrities.
Union members aren't supposed to do non-union projects, so if you want to hire a
star or a celebrity, every other voice you cast will have to be union talent as well.
Union voiceover actors are consummate professionals. They're quick and they're
good and you'll be out of the studio much faster than you would if you used less
experienced talent. They can usually play multiple roles, and the chances of having
to re-cast or re-record will be greatly reduced. So, even though you may have to pay
union talent more up front, you could conceivably save quite a bit of money on the
back end.
The other benefit of using union talent comes during the casting process. For
the most part, voiceover agents only handle union talent. Agents make the entire
casting process much less work intensive. You can email them audition scripts (also
known as sides—a sample is included in Appendix D), and they will take care of the
auditions. They will audition the actors they feel will best suit the roles. They will
then put all the auditions on a CD or email them to you as an MP3. There are voice
agents all across the country (and the world) and in most of the major cities. The
largest agencies with the top talent, however, are in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago,
Vancouver, Toronto, London, Sydney, and Auckland.
There are a number of online services that allow you to audition union talent
(and non-union in some cases). One of the largest and most successful is http://
www.voicebank.com. You simply go online, select the talent agencies you desire, and
upload the sides and any casting specs (casting specs are documents that describe who
the characters are: age, sex, accent, all the details). This service isn't free, but it can be
cost-effective when you consider the price of renting a recording studio and holding
your own auditions.