Dub Hub

Neon Genesis is shorthand for a 13-part series, Neon Genesis: Evangelion, a saga of top-secret government agencies and Biblical prophecy set in a dystopian 2015. It's one of ADV's top sellers, and Rockwell lovingly calls it "ADV's biggest mind trip." In his cluttered office/editing studio he cheerfully explains how anime artwork led his lapsed-Catholic self back to the fold. This reintroduction took several viewings: Rockwell initially followed a fairly obvious story line involving some children. Subsequent viewings revealed a complex subtext in the high-action, supersaturated hues and exquisite artwork of the animation, a plot he describes as more the Judeo part of Judeo-Christian ethics.

The latest twist for ADV is co-producing and producing new shows in Japan. Ledford says it was always his "goal to grow ADV to the point where we were no longer completely dependent on wherever the Japanese market was going." Japanese and American tastes in anime aren't in sync, and by producing its own shows with Japanese studios, ADV can script for elements popular with Western audiences.

They began with a co-production of Burn Up-W (the W stands for warrior). In mid-2000, ADV is scheduled to release Sin, based upon the highly successful PC video game by Dallas game developer Ritual Entertainment.

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Some do dubbing for the love, some for the fun and a one-time check. Royalties are not typical, but fees range from $50 for an hour in the studio to per-episode payments of hundreds of dollars, even four figures.

Greenfield believes actors love working for ADV. "They get to play characters they could never do on stage." And there is something to that. Peter Fernandez, the original voice of Speed, was middle-aged when he spoke for the junior racecar driver. Certain ADV actresses who shall remain nameless get a kick out of expressing the ecstasy of foxy combat vixens.

Rob Mungle is straightforward about his hundred-plus ADV roles. "It breaks down into three types: I do generals, big bruising guys, and when the part requires a really squirrelly homosexual voice, they call me in." For the latter, he uses the nasal singsong of Franklin Pangborn, a character actor perhaps best remembered as frequent guest-twerp on I Love Lucy.

And unlike several female actresses, Mungle isn't modest about having done the explicit subgenre known as softcel -- he's quick to point out that there's nothing soft about it. Whether space wars or naughty pictures, Mungle says it's fun, "especially the one where they let you play around with it and leave the script a little bit, use a bizarre voice and take a weird turn with your mind. Of course, you're limited because the animation's already done."

Actors not only have to hit the right note of terror or outrage or comedy, but they also must hit that note at a pace roughly matching the mouth movements on the monitor. But actors have it easier than engineers.

At the sound console, and a big bank of computer stuff that makes up the editing bay, engineers can tweak all kinds of things. Screens in the sound room display ragged oscilloscope waves with selected bits of dialogue shaded like the highlighted text in a word-processing document. Each of the bits can be sped up or slowed down, one at a time. Carefully syncing all the lines (and various explosions and traffic sounds and transmorphing effect sounds) is painstaking work.

It may seem like the kind of tedious work that could make any employee want to scream -- and that's exactly the situation at ADV.

When needed, most of the staff gets pulled into the dubbing booth for double-duty "scream sessions." They are no longer clerks from ordering, or shipping, or customer service. Instead, they become primitive villagers giving voice to the final terrified moments of, for instance, an entire village crushed by an avalanche. Or they might be space rangers yelling as their ship implodes under the pressure of supernatural forces.

Being able to scream at work is great, and, according to Ledford, so is working in Houston. He cites the availability of talented people -- actors, musicians, studio professionals -- with experience in the theater, commercials or corporate videos.

"They're here, and so is ADV," Ledford says. "We're a little slice of Hollywood right in their own backyard Š and after all, why should L.A. and New York have all the fun?"