Blaming Actors for Rising Animation Costs Is Mickey Mouse

Q: Who’s responsible for spiraling production costs?

A: Why, the $*! actors, of course.

C’mon, guys, that one’s got whiskers, and it would be unfortunate--and incorrect--if Daniel Cerone’s article on the new prime-time animation series “Capitol Critters” (“Bugging the White House,” Calendar, Jan. 28) gave readers that impression.

In the paragraph where “Critters” production costs are tabbed at $600,000 per episode, Cerone writes that it is not cheap to bring actors back in to rerecord or “loop” new lines over existing footage. He quotes exec producer Nat Mauldin as saying looping is “hard” and last-minute changes have to be avoided “at all costs because it costs a lot of money to do.” The only cost mentioned is the actors. Excuse me?

Let’s straighten out a few points. The standard Screen Actors Guild animation contract contains a provision to allow retakes for no additional pay, if the actor is back in the studio for another episode of the series. If recording on the whole season of “Critters” had already been completed, that wouldn’t apply, so the producers would have to book a new session specifically for the looping. Now comes the mondo bucks, right?

Well . . . unless you’ve cast incredibly expensive box-office stars, the cost to loop in new lines is (drum roll, please) . . . a scale session fee. Period. Under the current SAG contract, this is the glorious sum of $448, whether one line or the whole show, as much as can be done in one session--and with a competent actor that is a lot of work. By the animation contract, an actor can do up to three completely different characters in an episode. The majority of voice actors, even “name” actors in an animation series, work for scale. Expensive? That much gets spent on executive lunches.

The plain truth is that of the average production cost for a standard animation series, around 2.5-3% is actor salary. Over the lifetime of one standard animation show airing in all American markets, an actor can expect to make possibly--possibly--$2,000 total . . . in residual checks of $40 or less per episode, over a decade or more. Try buying a Mercedes on that.

But, since “Critters” is prime time and not Saturday morning, let’s assume the actors are not working under the animation contract. In that case, animation session time limits don’t apply, and they get a full day of looping for a single fee. And if actors are getting way over scale, producers would have to be fools not to have a discounted day for looping or retakes included as part of the contract. Such caveats are an industry standard. Contrary to popular opinion, most producers are not fools.

Cerone also quotes Mauldin as saying viewers have “no idea how hard it is to go back in and loop new lines.” Puh-lease! At some point on every show, someone always says, “We’ll fix it in post.” If it’s got dialogue, some percentage WILL be looped-in after the fact. Maybe the original sound is bad, the reading wasn’t right, maybe a dirty word needs to be excised--whatever the reason, it’s gonna happen. Looping is part of an actor’s basic skills and talents.

Listen carefully: Anyone can loop, if they can read and speak--but it takes an actor to make it sound right. It’s like the difference between commuting on the 405 and driving at Daytona.

How difficult the looping session is depends absolutely on the writer. If it’s written correctly, all the mouth movements falling where they need to be, the actor’s technique becomes secondary to the performance. A couple of takes and the new line will be in place, looking--and sounding--as if that’s what it had always been.

The writer’s skill is in finding the right words. The actor’s skill is in making them live.

A last-minute change “costs a lot of money to do” only if it involves the artwork. The high cost of animation is in character drawing, backgrounding, storyboarding, in-betweening, inking, coloring, and on and on. It’s incredibly labor-intensive work.

Let’s put the emphasis on cost where it belongs. There are hundreds of people working behind the scenes. The handful of actors involved are the biggest bargain they’ve got.