How to credit an actor that needs an as attribute for one credit but not for others

Yeah, I'm not sure what the right answer is. I thought I would ask the question (and hopefully get staff input) before I undertake updating the episodes. It's going to be a big undertaking as all episodes will need to have their cast reordered. (Currently, the Chopper credit is completely ignored on this series except for the last 2 episodes.)

Hello, Steve. 

It depends but usually if there are two roles on the actor and only one of them is voice, then it should be specified in the role filed itself, but it if the role is descriptive enough and is voice only in the movie (or barely anything more then it), then it might as well be just listed without any further voice credit. 

Some examples, mostly from my own experience as an IMDb contributor: 

• Bruce Campbell has three roles in Lunatics: A Love Story (1991): Ray (which is credited), Mad Surgeon (which is uncredited, but actually probably has more screen time) and the voice of Mikhail Gorbachev. I've added the last one and I thought for a long time whether it should say "Voice of Mikhail Gorbachev". I decided against it for two reasons: firstly, it is obvious that Gorbachev is a voice-only cameo because a) in the movie it is a hallucination which manifests itself with Gorbachev on the cover of Tempo magazine suddenly beginning to talk and b) the fact that lips superimposed on the photo are those of director Josh Becker are already detailed in both cast and trivia sections and it is easily seen that voice work was actually a prevalent component of that role. 
• Sam Raimi has two uncredited roles in Evil Dead II (1987): medieval soldier (which is actually a speaking part and is uncredited just because it is a cameo) and (wait for it) he also voiced noises which posessed rocking chair emits. Considering that object which is posessed could be considered a character, but the noise is hardly any kind of voice, I decided to put it as just a character descriptor (especially since it is obvious that he can't perform that in any other kind). 
• Sam Raimi also has two cameos on The Evil Dead (1981): one is an on-screen appearance as a fisherman and another one is the voice of the evil force, which yells things like "join us". For ages it was credited as "Voice of Evil Force", but not so long ago someone changed it to just The Evil Force. 
• Finally, I myself have quite a few acting credits in which there are a few roles and some of them are voice acting. Depending on case I specified it right away. In this movie, although I was only credited for one role, I actually had six, with five of them being voices. I've only specified that fact with the roles, visual side of which was portrayed by other actors (who were credited for them) by putting "(Growling)" in brackets. On one short film of mine I have two voice cameos (with proper "(voice)" attribute) and both are weird: Ukrainian credit narrator and Surgeon voices. I was thinking a lot on how to formulate it because the situation is rather uniqe: my voice appears in movies-within-the-movie with first instance being a replication of common practice in some countries: a voice is reading a translation of main titles. Since this time it was made specifically for the movie it should have been mentioned, I guess. As for the second credit, I'm actually thinking it might be reasonable to separate it in two because it looks like that: often Post-Soviet dubs are more of a voiceover translation: there are multiple actors and the are performing, but original voices are not removed and are heard as well, albeit usually being a bit silenced. In another film-within-a-film I portray both the voice of a character (who happens to be portrayed by another, credited actor) as well as such a mock-up dub in Ukrainian (and, although overall sound in the short was crappy, that time I actually succeeded in making them different enough and properly sounding). On another short film I have three roles: one is an on-screen cameo, other is a narration voiceover and the third one is, again, a voice of a character who is visually portrayed by another, credited actor. In the latter case I put it as  "Bobby's voice", while the first voiceover role was just put as "Epigraph Narrator".    

That said I stumble upon weird cases every now and then. Gunnar Hansen appears in two roles in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013): the first one was filmed specifically for the movie and the second one is archive footage of him as Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). I've recently stumbled upon the fact that he is credited for second as "Leatherface (archive footage)" with part in brackets being part of the role and not an attribute. I'm confused as to whether I should correct this or not. If I should then I'll probably go for "Boss Sawyer/Leatherface" with attribute "(also archive footage)" but, if you think about it, what we already have puts it in a good, a bit less confusing way, already. That and, as far as I know, credits might actually say "Leatherface (archive footage)".   

Sorry for that gigantic comment, I guess I got carried away. :) 

Thanks Nikolay,
Yes, there are cases where it would be fairly obvious, but there are other cases where it isn't at all obvious.
What if one actor played 3 roles, playing Tom, Dick & Harry but Dick was a (voice only) credit and Harry was an (uncredited) appearance
You can't really submit it as playing Tom / Dick / Harry with Attributes (voice only) (uncredited)

In The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) Deborah Kerr plays 3 roles. She plays Edith Hunter in a 1902 sequence, then she plays Barbara Wynn in a 1918 sequence, then finally she plays Angela "Johnny" Cannon in a 1940s sequence.

I would really like to add the dates for each character as a attribute, but I can't separate them out

    Steve

That would have been really cool to have a possibility of several roles and attributes. I don't know whether it is possible with the website's engine though and even if it is, implementation probably will take at least a year. 

An unrelated message that should be a separate thread.

Please reference the new conversation here: I had a very small roll in Black Panther but I am not credited. How do I go about...

Looks fine, but if Dave Filoni is credited as both Dave Filoni and Chopper, it should have two attributes, like a leading man on this short film (sorry for using my own as an example, it's from the top of my head; I can assure you it is based on previous examples I've stumbled upon which were converted from "also as"). 

Thanks Nikolay,
But how can Slava Pustovalov be credited (as Slava Pustovalov) and (also as Sleva Pustovalov)?

Why does it need the "Slava Pustovalov (as Slava Pustovalov)"?

    Steve

To signify that he is credited with both names, not just one alternate name. Attributes are also added in the credits order. 

Is this in the guide or is this your convention? I agree with Steve that having an "as" attribute that is the same as the credited name looks wrong and is probably more confusing than just having a single attribute. (Also, if there are more than two characters, do you continue with as many attributes as there are characters? If not, why?)

Edit: Just took a look at the guide. Using an "as" attribute where the attribute is the same as the name listed in IMDb would violate the cast guide. 

• (as...) - Someone is credited with a different name from their usual name.

As far as I know guidelines say nothing on what to do with what was previously "(also as)" and I can see that some credites were just converted to "(as...)", including this person, who often gets two credits on special  thanks in my short films,  

To be honest, I can't immediately find the cases which I have seen of that convention (which drives me a tiny bit crazy because I always research cases like that and it was definitely not a decision made myself) and adopted it for my own use, but I have definitely seen it used more then once. 

If the guidelines for that changed then I will probably correct all my instances accordingly, but it's one of unclear moments as of now. 

Okay Will. I will change the ones I did last night and use "also as" as I update the series (which has some serious ordering problems from before I started editing it.)

Also as is not a valid attribute or am I forming it wrong? It seems to me that it should be (also as Chopper) where it ignores what's after "also as".

Hello, Will! 

Why "(also as)" attribute disappeared from everywhere not so long ago, though? 

I just want to bump this to make sure Will sees it again to see that this is still a problem.

Hi Adrian,

Here you need to add two (as) attributes, one after the other which creates the (also as) attribute which is what we store internally, apologies for the confusion. So in this case it would be:
Imperial Officer #2/C1-10P aka 'Chopper' (voice) (as Dave Filoni) (as Chopper)

I've also added this to the cast guide now to provide further clarification. Thanks for raising.

Thanks Will.

Hi Will,

I do not see anything in the cast guide about this but maybe I'm missing it. I expected it in the attribute section.

A few notes. First, order is important. The "also as" attribute is added to the second (and maybe everyone afterwards). Second, "also as" is a valid attribute if there is another "as" attribute. Third, the display is not what I would have expected.


I would have thought the display would ignore "as Dave Filoni" since that is his given name and just shown something like "also as Chopper".