Cortana Works For Scale Wages

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting on local theater folks who do voice-work in videogames. One of the article's examples is that of Jen Taylor, who plays the voice of Master Chief's synthetic partner in crime, the AI Cortana. From the article: "Cortana, an artificial intelligence that is pretty much in charge of things in 'Halo' 1 and 2, is played by Book-It Repertory Theatre regular Jen Taylor. Cortana, of course, is a necessary factor in 'Halo 3,' which is in the process of development. Taylor is in Australia working in a Seattle Children's Theatre co-production ... A recurring role commands extra money. For 'Halo 1' Taylor got about $500 for a four-hour session. For 'Halo 2' she got twice that. "But the technicians had gotten so good at what they were doing," Taylor notes with some regret, 'that they got twice the amount of work done in half the time. So my actual pay was about the same.' When actors do voiceover work, they are represented by AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists). The union contract stipulates a fee of $600 for most four-hour recording sessions."

How Much is Enough?

[BandwidthHog]

Interesting timing. I'm currently about halfway through cleaning up and chopping into bits the product of two four hour voiceover sessions. It is amazing how much of a difference good voiceover talent can make. Our primary female voice talent (we alternate between male and female voices throughout each lesson) is a local morning DJ who is simply awesome. It is just astounding what she can get right on a single take, and we deal with some rather technical tongue-twisters with all sorts of little-known jargon. In general, these people don't get paid well enough (although the male whose work I am attempting to salvage was paid entirely too much, seeing as how he can’t correctly pronounce the word “oxygen”).

But as to the yawning chasm between the wages of on-camera and voiceover talent, are the vocal artists paid too little or are the folks with the perfect teeth paid too much? I lean toward the latter. I’m not saying Sean Connery shouldn’t make more than I do, but should he make fifty times what I do? Five hundred? Ten thousand times my salary? (And before you respond with something involving the words “what the market will bear,” look at everything going on with Hollywood and see how well the market seems to be bearing such cost structures.)

$125/hour -- quit yer bitching

[Anonymous Coward]

"$125/hr ... contract"
Wonder if there's any connection there? A well defined job performed for well-defined wages.

Sorry, no sympathy here. The programmers & artists, by contrast, work astounding, absurd numbers of hours in an "at will" arrangement which means they can be dismissed at any time, without cause, and without recourse. Wanna bet they're not earning anywhere close to that?

I worked on a PC Gamer Game Of The Year title and occasionally worked more than 100 hours per week... all for $60k/year which divides out to a bit more than minimum wage.

Hollywood bosses are overpaid

[TheLink]

Well a good actor can sometimes come up with a brilliant adlib and turn a mediocre part of a screenplay into a memorable scene.

But the Hollywood bosses are definitely overpaid. Whoever it was that kept making those crappy Kevin Costner movies was overpaid.

The fact that Hollywood intentionally makes violent movies AND then tries to chop them up so that they get "ok for kids" ratings shows to me that their primary agenda is not profit (at least for the companies they work for), and thus they shouldn't be paid so much.

It's like a whisky maker making whisky and then watering it down till the law says the result can be served to minors without parental supervision. The result sure isn't going to make the whisky drinkers happy. And you think it makes parents happy?

Whenever they try that sort of crap the movie doesn't do that well, and then they blame "piracy", P2P and everyone else but themselves.

Also for some reason Hollywood (not everyone else) seems a bit surprised when stuff like "Finding Nemo" becomes a hit. If Hollywood was really interested in profit and making money, they'd be making more movies genuinely suitable or even targeted at children and families, just like McDonalds targets children and families.

Sure many of us might barf at that sort of stuff, but it sells - the evidence is there. You don't have to enjoy something to know it sells.

Just a look at:
http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross
and:
http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region= world-wide

And then when you look at:
http://www.imdb.com/chart/

Which of those movies in the chart would be enjoyed by the people who enjoyed any of the top boxoffice hits? Go see later (total takings) if there's a correlation.

Also why bother making: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" AND then water it down?
"According to producer Brad Fuller, the film was given an NC-17 by the MPAA, and a total of 17 scenes had to be edited in order to get an R rating."

So either Hollywood is incompetent or they are up to no good.

Re:You are getting $125-$150 an hour to talk

[Purity Of Essence]

What voice actors? Unfortunately Hollywood only hires "real" actors for their animated features. If they just hired actual voice talent, the casting would be cheaper, and the product would be better.