A question about dubbing companies

[Simpler Simon]

After all the time I've spent on this forum, this is one question I still haven't seen an answer to:

Whenever an anime gets licensed and the company who got it is revealed, there's always discussion of who will dub the voices. Usually, this discussion goes along the line of "I hope they get [actor's name] to dub [character]." So how do dubbing companies work? Do they hire a group of people who always do the dub work for every show that comes in, like a theatre group adapting its cast to different scripts? Or do they just tend to favor the same VA's and hire them on a repeat basis? And if so, why do they seldom hire experienced VA's from american shows?

[Arxane]

Dubbing companies work like this: when a company (say, Geneon), licenses Show X, they send it off to a dubbing studio (for example, AniMaze). Dubbing studios tend to have their own script adapters, voice directors, sound mixers, etc., but they need to hire voice actors. Voice actors don't really "work" for a dubbing studio so much as they're hired by a dubbing studio to do the work, and this usually means the dubbing studio will hire VAs that live nearby. This is why you'll often hear the same voices in dubs by ADV and Funimation - they're both located in Texas and draw from the same pool of VAs. Sometimes a dubbing studio will hire voice actors outside of its usual pool (like when ADV went to Canada to get four of the original voice actors from SoulTaker for Nurse Witch Komugi), but this is rare because it's typically expensive.


And if so, why do they seldom hire experienced VA's from american shows?
Could be location. Could be because of possible conflict between union and non-union work (I don't understand either). Or it could be because American VAs don't like dubbing - dub actors have to match lip movements as well as act, while American show VAs don't have that limitation.

[Nobuyuki sama]

Could be because of possible conflict between union and non-union work (I don't understand either). The difference in payscale between union and non-union work also contributes to keeping the talent pool small, unfortunately.