Bayonetta actress refusing role over $4,000 deal
$4,000 is right up the alley of the game industry standard, which is about $300/hour spent in the studio. That's 13 hours. I have some experience recording voice acting with amateur and semi-professional voice actors for a 6-8 hour game, and those sessions have all taken <8 hours (for about 200-250 takes of 70-80 lines). I have no doubt that a professional studio and professional voice actress would be more efficient than that.
I would be really curious to hear how much she was paid for Bayonetta 1 and 2. That's something we don't know, so saying that $4,000 is low and they were only paying her that to get her out of the game is jumping the gun.
This is a longstanding issue though, voice actors feeling like they aren't getting paid enough for their work. The ones that actually end up making a lot of money from it are the ones who take a lot of gigs and go to conventions, doing a lot of work both in and out of the studio. I would not be surprised in the slightest if Jennifer Hale took the role for less money than $4,000. Silent Hill 2 remastered had a completely different voice cast of really popular VAs because the original ones wanted more money to have their voices in another release of the game, so there isn't any reason Konami would have paid other voice actors more money than what the original voice actors wanted. That situation just seems very similar to this one.
Unfortunately, it seems like Hellena has kind of dug her own grave. Complaining about being paid a certain amount means that no developer will be looking to hire her if they don't want to pay her more than $4,000. Instead of getting that amount of money, she's likely going to have a hard time finding work now. Devs are going to be hiring voice actors that are actually willing to do work for that money, ones that do a LOT of work so they are actually making good wages.
Say what you will about the game industry not paying voice actors enough or something, but this amount of payment is usually par for the course.
@beardalaxy
300 dollars per hour? That's amazing. Good luck trying to find that anywhere else.
Also, if your character becomes popular, you can expect every game the character is in to at least try getting the same voice.
I don't know. I might be missing something, but this seems like an amazing deal to me.
@beardalaxy
Also, no ammount of money can give you this lifestyle.
@LukeAlmighty there's a reason why voice actors are going to conventions all the time. they probably get paid more doing that, from the convention as well as signed autographs and photos/videos, than they do from the voice roles themselves. it's a much different ball game than being a hollywood movie star.
@LukeAlmighty it's somewhat similar to what musicians go through with their payment. they hardly get any money from their actual music sales, it's mostly from merchandise and especially concert tickets. they don't get paid to make music, they get paid to perform.
in a similar vein, voice actors don't get paid a whole lot of money to just sit in a studio for a handful of hours, they get paid a whole lot of money when they are going to a lot of jobs all the time, taking as many gigs as they can, and becoming popular because of that so they can go to conventions and get more money and more fans.
it's a much different world from hollywood or TV, but people EXPECT it to be like hollywood or TV when that's just not the case.
@LukeAlmighty this is part of the reason why i don't have a huge focus on producing music. it's much more on performing and i can guarantee you that i have made more money than most other indie artists where i live because of that. i'm out here making $1000+/month for the past 7 years while you have guys only playing as couple shows a month max, where not many people show up, then spending a lot of money on studio time to make music not a lot of people will listen to.