The Ecole Cartoucherie Animation Solidaire (ÉCAS), France’s first ever comprehensive free animation school, launched by TeamTO in 2018, has partnered with FROG BOX production studio and post-production service provider TITRAFILM to create a new course in dubbing to train professional actors for animation. “Over the past few years, there has been a general awareness and desire among producers, major platforms and traditional broadcasters to integrate a greater representation of society. Strong initiatives have been put into place to encourage more diversity in creative and technical teams," Guillaume HELLOUIN, President of ÉCAS and TeamTO said. "And while animation studios have been featuring ever more diverse characters in their stories, the industry is becoming increasingly aware of the low representation of cultural and social communities among voice actors.”
After four successful years of training 3D character animators and storyboarders (in partnership with House of Cool), L'ÉCAS has created a dubbing program in response to the under-representation and lack of diversity in this sector. Stanislas RENAUDEAU D'ARC, Managing Director of FROG BOX concludes: "Bettering ourselves means offering people from underrepresented communities and social backgrounds more opportunities to be heard and, if necessary, to try and address the shortage of talent and skills through training programs.”
The goal of the dubbing course is to recruit, cast, train and group new dubbing actors based on existing gaps in the market, thereby expanding the pool of talent currently available to the French and European markets for clients and other dubbing providers. The objective of the program is to create a more diversified repertoire of dubbing actors to meet or anticipate demands for diversity and representation, essential elements for building a stronger society.
“Diversity is a fact, inclusion is a choice," Rodolphe PLOQUIN, Animation post-production director at TITRAFILM said. "We are confident that combined efforts will help us build a model of sustainable diversity and inclusion in the animation industry. We are also at the beginning of a narrative revolution that will allow beautiful and new stories to come from all walks of life, to be inspired and created by people of all backgrounds and to be shared with the whole world. These advances will hopefully allow us to support this change across the industry.”