In the exotic world of dubbing or versioning, creative work is assigned to freelance dubbing directors, dialogue editors, adapters, detectors and calligraphers.

Detectors write dialogue in frame-by-frame sync on 35mm white leader in order to obtain high-sync graphical representation of the rhythmic structure of the mouth movements and text. Adaptators are called on to write out the original translations, but they are not ‘translators,’ says Lauzon, because film dialogue is adapted, not translated.

Calligraphers obviously have penmanship skills and transcribe either adaptations (dubbing) or original texts (post-sync) onto 35mm clear leader. The strip, generically called a rythmo-band, is projected on a soundstage studio screen above the image during rerecording and acts as a precise synchronization prompt for actors.

Quebec

According to its practitioners, the dubbing business in Quebec has grown by as much as 50% in recent years, spurred on as more Canadian productions seek out export markets. But it is also an industry with a built-in fragility.

Worth an estimated $15 million a year, the industry in Quebec benefits from disbursements from Telefilm Canada’s annual Versioning Assistance Fund and work from the Hollywood studios, which increasingly double-dub in French for both the local market and France.

The latter policy has helped the u.s. majors capture 85% of Quebec theatrical admissions, but the added cost of separate dubbing for the Quebec market, a market 10 times smaller than France, keeps the local industry guessing.

Patricia Gariepy, president of Association quebecoise des industries techniques du cinema et de la television, representing dubbers, and director of dubbing services at AstralTech, says language differences in the two markets work to Quebec’s favor. ‘The French speak much faster and have a much higher range of voices. It’s a bit unnerving,’ says Gariepy.

Another spin on this difference might be framed like this – Hollywood’s ‘Stars and Stripes’ message is rendered ridiculous in French-speaking North America by the otherworldliness of European accents, argot and vocabulary.

And the fact the French take longer to complete versioning assignments – final original versions arrive at the last minute and the dubbed versions are needed yesterday – is also a poor fit with Quebec’s de facto day-and-date release policy for the o.v. and French-track versions for the majority of Hollywood features.

In 1994, of the 221 first-run u.s. releases in Quebec theaters, 134 were dubbed into French. Just under half were dubbed in Quebec, the rest, 51%, were dubbed in France.

Versioning Fund

Telefilm’s $5.8 million Versioning Assistance Fund is administered by Monique Cote, an analyst in the agency’s marketing and distribution department, and is accessed exclusively by distributors and exporters. Priority is given to Canadian productions, specifically productions with direct Telefilm investment. About 20% of the fund has been used for foreign productions in recent years.

For 1995/96, Telefilm has raised the recoupment level for its dubbing fund investments – 50% for Canadian productions, up from 40% last year, and 65% for foreign productions.

Gariepy says dubbing companies ‘are generally pleased’ with the operation of the Versioning Fund, ‘one of the few where they get their money back.’ She says dubbing companies report expenditures to the agency, and ‘Telefilm has the tools to check’ on spending by distributors.

The godfather of Quebec dubbers, Cinelume president Yordan Nicolov, a 30-year veteran of the business, says Montreal is Canada’s dubbing capital, but this hasn’t done much for the industry on the international level.

Nicolov believes Quebec government policy has been counterproductive, and says the authorities should apply the same monopolistic restrictions on versioning work in Quebec as the powerful performers unions have in France.

Still, Nicolov says he manages to dub for two French broadcasters ‘who didn’t sign with the union.’

Dubbing work at Cinelume’s three studios includes the Alliance cyber-thriller Johnny Mnemonic; The Mask, versioned for Alliance Vivafilm; 52 hours of Productions sda’s Scoop, versioned at about $20,000 an hour and broadcast on cbc; Via le Monde’s Defi Mondial; and two teen series, Degrassi and 39 hours of Ready or Not, both versioned for Paragon and broadcasters Radio-Quebec and Canal Famille, respectively.

Double Vue

One of the rising stars on the local versioning scene is Nathalie Bourdon, president of three-year-old Double Vue. Bourdon and operations director Claudine Carpentier lead a team which works in both French and English for clients in Montreal, Toronto, Europe and the u.s.

‘The milieu is terribly competitive but people try to be fair,’ says Bourdon. ‘There’s the old gang, and the new gang, and of course the younger ones have to push a bit.’

Projects at Double Vue include Kitty Cats, dubbed for Multimedia Group and Discovery USA; Eric’s World, produced for Cambium Releasing; six hours of Brides of Christ for Ellis Enterprises and Radio-Canada; Groundling Marsh for Portfolio; 26 episodes of Secret Life of Toys for Nelvana; and projects for Brazil’s Globo-tv, Bavaria Gmbh, Triangle Films, Ironstar Communications and the National Film Board.

Bourdon, aqitct secretary and one of the many women who dominate the management of the local versioning industry, qualifies Double Vue as a ‘fully digital tristandard language versioning house.’

The company has two Rythmobands, the equipment and technical standard in Quebec and France, and like the other major suppliers, prepares music and effects tracks and original audio tracks.

Cinar Studios

Another state-of-the-art dubbing supplier is Cinar Studios.

Headed by director Chantal Page, co-ordinator Marie-Andree Bedard and art co-ordinator Louis Junger, recent Cinar projects include two in-house productions, Million Dollar Babies, broadcast on Radio-Canada, and Wimzie’s House. Other work includes The Little Twins, a Japanese animation series versioned in English for Elegant Films, New York, and Alliance International, and Voices to Remember, a documentary from Toronto’s Condor Productions.

Sonolab

Sonolab director of dubbing Helene Lauzon says versioning costs for features can run from $40,000 to $60,000, and more for animated features with songs. A 22-hour series like Telescene Communications’ Sirens can run up to $400,000.

Recent dubbing projects at Sonolab, a part of the large Tele-Metropole post-production group, include two features, The Crow and Basketball Diaries, both done for CFP Distribution.

Industry veteran and aqitct vice-president Lauzon says the Rythmoband enables dubbers to achieve highly accurate lip sync because every lip movement including ‘mouth noises’ is recorded for subsequent adaptation and transcription directly onto the Rythmoband. This strip is then used in sync with the picture in-studio.

AstralTech

For a number of reasons, AstralTech’s dubbing service is the market leader, handling some 60 versioned feature film releases a year for Warner Bros., Columbia, Buena Vista, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Universal, mgm/ua and Savoy Pictures.

In tv, Astral dubs The Simpsons, versioned for Television Quatre Saisons, Alliance’s North of 60, broadcast on Radio-Canada, and is doing the Neofilms miniseries Misericorde (Mercy).

New jobs include dialogue and songs for the Buena Vista animated feature Pocahontas and Batman Forever.

The day-and-date release policy in Quebec can put enormous pressure on dubbers.

Gariepy says AstralTech still hadn’t received a final version of the new Die Hard movie eight days before its scheduled release.

New on the post scene

A new shop on the Montreal dubbing scene is Phase Detection, headed by president Jean-Loup Yale.

Yale says his company has ‘a truly international approach,’ offering multilingual detection in ntsc, pal and Secam for dubbing and post-sync work, in addition to Rythmoband calligraphy and script services.

According to Yale, Phase Detection is the first North American owner of the high-speed, state-of-the-art, multi-standard ctm detection table.

Another recent arrival on the Montreal scene is Ultra Sync. Opened in 1992, the company specializes in sync and adaptation work for corporate, educational and documentary film clients. It’s headed by president Lisette Pelletier and production vice-president Bruno Parent.

Parent says the shop has a unique approach to the market, training skilled adapters for work in foreign languages including Mandarin, Japanese, German and Spanish. In launching the training program, he says hundreds of applications were received, but only 10 were chosen.

‘Working in sync is very complicated because of the particularities of foreign languages. There’s a lack of skilled people able to write. It requires perfect mastery of the language. This place has become like a little United Nations,’ says Parent.

Other suppliers

Other Montreal companies active in dubbing and belonging to the aqitct include Cine-Groupe, Cinefilms & Video Productions, Multidub, headed by veteran Pierre Dequoy, Publi-Sync, Studio Place Royale, and Studio Marko, an important commercial supplier headed by France Nantel and Jean-Claude Tremblay.

Talks with unions

The aqitct recently began separate collective agreement talks with actra and Union des artistes.

Gariepy says the dubbers ‘generally have good relations with uda but new collective agreement talks with actra are more complex.’ This is because the Canadian Film and Television Production Association and Quebec’s producers group, the apftq, claim jurisdiction and play intermediary roles.

Beyond Quebec

A Toronto-area dubbing company active in the aqitct is Optimum Productions, headed by president Louis Hurtubise and production director Nicole Thuault.

The company, in operation since 1986, also uses the Rythmoband technique.

Recent work at Optimum includes 16 episodes of Rose Films’ historical series Jalna, broadcast on the CanWest Global System, three foreign animation series prepared in Canada for Kaleidoscope Entertainment – Sailor Moon, Hello Kitty and Keroppi and Friends – and three Canadian feature films dubbed into French for Cineplex Odeon – Cadillac Girls, South of Wawa and Ordinary Magic.

Located in Mississauga, Ont., Optimum is also a member of the National Association of Broadcasters and the itva. Hurtubise says he attends trade shows around the world including the past six nab conferences where he can be spotted wearing his trademark tuxedo.

‘We have the best pool of actors in Canada,’ Hurtubise says. ‘In English, there’s a great deal of versatility, you can have any flavor you wish.’

Niches elsewhere

While Quebec dominates the true international versioning scene, there are also niches elsewhere.

In Ontario, post shops tend to offer a la carte services, often aided by outside specialists. One such is Master’s Workshop, which does a hefty volume of imax versioning. Master’s Workshop vp and gm Bob Predovich says from a revenue standpoint within this niche market, ‘we likely do more versioning than anyone.’ The imax films, which have historically been predominately narration driven, require the correct imax acoustic mix environment, and therefore a number of imax theaters around the world recommend the Toronto shop.

There’s also a specific market in Vancouver which arrives from the Pacific Rim and Europe, sometimes via l.a.

Barry Backus, post-production manager at Vancouver’s Greenhouse Studios, says, ‘We have an edge because we’re in the same time zone as the u.s. and it’s a three-hour flight.’

Vancouver attracts l.a. producers seeking versioning for foreign programming with the allure of its talent (and potential buyouts thereof) and less expensive studio services.

And the Pacific Rim is a growing market, providing work for Vancouver studios – specifically animation work.

A few years back, Greenhouse did 1,100 hours of versioning for Japan’s nhk.

Prior to joining Greenhouse, Backus (as a freelancer) did the English version of a popular Japanese cartoon, Dragon Ball, as a sub service contractor to BLT Productions, for its l.a. client. The English pilot required revoicing, new music and a recut title sequence. And often, Backus says the Asian toons need some sanitizing, to eliminate nudity and excessive violence that would offend North American viewers.

Vancouver’s Ocean Group does a fair amount of both animation and live-action versioning, and has an office in Tokyo. Ken Morrison, director of acquisitions and production says about 70% of this work is Pacific Rim, and 30% European, and that most is done for internal group clients, distributors in Canada, u.s. and Europe.

Vancouver-based Pinewood Sound president Geoff Turner says while there is a fair amount of work coming into the b.c. market, and that the studios do a good job, the market is not on the same scale as the international versioning done in Quebec.

Pinewood has also done a few projects for nhk, but once the incoming work went beyond half-hour kids’ shows and Pinewood began to receive drama projects it was no longer economically feasible, as the offshore clients did not want to get into the hierarchy of talent payment negotiations that continuing series of this sort require in Canada.

Curiously, Pinewood is now doing versions from English to Cantonese and Punjabi for the local corporate market.