Titan Productions
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Titan Productions, Inc., formerly known as Titra Sound Studios, was a Manhattan-based dubbing company. Titan is mostly known for producing dubs for American International Pictures (AIP), including its catalog of imported Japanese tokusatsu films from Toho and Daiei. Its most notable works include English dubs for Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Destroy All Monsters (1968), and four of the eight films in the Showa Gamera series.
History
Titan Productions began as a subtitling company in Paris, France before setting up offices in Manhattan and pursuing the dubbing business. Their New York offices occupied three floors of the National Screen building at 1600 Broadway between 48th and 49th Street.[2][3] The dubbing studios were always dark with heavy velvet drapes.[4]
Titan was known for its use of professional New York actors such as Peter Fernandez, Corrine Orr, Hal Linden, Arianné Ulmer Cipes, Larry Robinson, Bret Morrison, and Jack Curtis. The actors were encouraged to adopt faux Asian accents instead of their natural voices for Japanese cast members, in an attempt to make the films sound as natural as possible.[2][3] Scriptwriters were given 5% of the budget for a production, while the directors were given 10%. Peter Fernandez typically served as writer and director, in addition to actor, for Titan.[5][6]
The films were dubbed via the looping method.[2] There is no evidence that the company required dubbing scriptwriters fluent in Japanese; Peter Fernandez saw this as allowing him creative freedom when writing the English lines.[6] When dealing with dialogue translations from Japan, Fernandez discovered that an acceptable match between the image and the English sound could be made as long as a writer avoided ending on labials (b, m, and p) which required closed lips.[3]
On December 15, 1965, Paul Sandars, Jr. and Steve Rozenfeld, Titra's former vice president and production head, respectively, announced that Titra would become Titan Productions. Sandars became president of the company while Rozenfeld became vice-president.[1] In 1967, Fernandez left Titan to work on other projects, although he would later return for freelance dubbing jobs.[2] Eventually, work for Titan began to dwindle, leading the studio to stop producing dubs around 1980 and close thereafter.[2][7]
Selected films dubbed
- Note: This section uses the films’ original American titles alongside the years that they were originally released in Japan.
- Warning from Space (1956)
- Mothra (1961)
- Atragon (1963)
- Godzilla vs. The Thing (1964)
- Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)
- Gammera the Invincible (1965)
- Return of Giant Majin (1966)
- Godzilla versus the Sea Monster (1966)
- Magic Serpent (1966)
- Son of Godzilla (1967)
- Destroy All Planets (1968)
- Destroy All Monsters (1968)
- Attack of the Monsters (1969)
- Gamera vs. Monster X (1970)
- Yog, Monster from Space (1970)
- Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971)
Voice actors employed
- Lloyd Battista
- Jack Curtis[2]
- Peter Fernandez[2][5][6]
- Bernard Grant
- William Griffis
- Earl Hammond
- Kenneth Harvey
- Paul Hecht
- William Kiehl[2]
- Tom Klunis
- Anthony La Penna
- Hal Linden[2]
- Lucy Martin[2]
- Bret Morrison[2]
- Corinne Orr[4]
- Larry Robinson[2][8]
- Norman Rose[2]
- Paulette Rubinstein[2][7]
- Arianné Ulmer Cipes[3]
- Terry Van Tell[2]
Gallery
Dubbing credit in Warning from Space
Dubbing credit in Mothra
Dubbing credit in Atragon
Dubbing credit in Godzilla vs. The Thing
Dubbing credit in Frankenstein Conquers the World
Dubbing credit in Return of Giant Majin
Dubbing credit in Magic Serpent
Dubbing credit in Destroy All Planets
Dubbing credit in Destroy All Monsters
Dubbing credit in Attack of the Monsters
Dubbing credit in Gamera vs. Monster X
Dubbing credit in Yog, Monster from Space
Dubbing credit in Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster
Videos
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References
This is a list of references for Titan Productions. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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