Voice casting directors mistakenly moved to Casting Dept for animated productions

Animated productions are predominantly composed of a voice cast, and the voice casting director for an animated production are typically listed in the main-on-end credits just as a live-action casting director would be for a live-action production. You cannot argue that the voice casting director for an animated movie or show isn't the main casting director and that their role should be trivialized into the casting department, especially for a medium where an overwhelming majority of the cast is a voice role.

It's not as if I am advocating placing ADR casting or extras casting into the Casting Director section, as they are for the most minor of roles in any medium of production. Just that IMDb be more mindful of the fact that voice casting on an animated production is not the same as voice casting on a live-action production, as in the former case they are the main casting director role and the latter is for voicing characters among a majority physical cast. But in animation, without the voice casting director there is no voice cast, just as without a casting director in a live-action movie you have no cast.

It makes no logical sense that voice casting directors should be placed in the casting department for animated productions when they are responsible for casting the voice actors that make them up, so I insist the guideline should be amended to reflect that the matter of voice casting be treated differently for animated vs. live-action media.

@mikeydj20​  Thanks, here's a little bit of analysis below which we will present to the team on whether to update the policy (and therefore allow the credits to move). The data supports your case, however, this needs a policy decision first which will take several weeks as it is behind other launches and credit moves.  Comments welcome on anything we may have missed in the write-up below. 

# Voice Casting / Voice Casting Director — Category Placement Analysis

## Scoping caveat — two distinct populations

"Voice cast…" text covers two things that must not be conflated: 

1. ADR / loop-group / walla voice casting — e.g. `adr voice casting` (22,252 credits in Casting Department), `loop group & voice casting`, `walla voice casting`. This is post-production dubbing / looping / crowd-voice casting and is a genuine Casting Department sub-role. These should stay where they are and are excluded from all figures below. 

2. The headline roles the customer means — `voice casting director` and `voice casting` (including place/language-qualified variants such as `voice casting director: original`), excluding the ADR/loop/walla and assistant/coordinator/manager sub-roles. This is the population analysed below. 

## Distribution (headline roles only)

Across the live corpus, the two headline roles break down as follows. 
`voice casting director` — 3,499 credits total, and it is already overwhelmingly in the Casting Director category: - In Casting Director: 3,351 — of which 2,827 are on animated titles and 524 on non-animated. - In Casting Department: only 148 — 68 animated, 80 non-animated.
`voice casting` (bare) — 3,383 credits total, and it sits almost entirely in the department: - In Casting Department: 3,361 — of which 862 are animated and 2,499 non-animated. - In Casting Director: just 22 (all animated).

### Two headline findings

1. `voice casting director` — the customer is right, and the scope is small. It is already treated as a main Casting Director credit in 3,351 of 3,499 cases, with only 148 in Casting Department. Moving those 148 into Casting Director is a clean, low-risk correction. Animated titles where a `voice casting director` currently sits in Casting Department include Finding Nemo (2003), Coraline (2009), The Pagemaster (1994), The Queen's Corgi (2019) and Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2021).

2. Bare `voice casting` — more nuanced than "animated only". The bulk (3,361) sits in Casting Department, but it is mostly non-animated: only 862 (26%) are on animated titles, while 2,499 (74%) are live-action. So framing the fix purely as "for animated productions" would address only about a quarter of where this role appears. 

## Does the title already have a different main casting director?

This is the key discriminator for whether a Casting-Department voice-casting credit is a mis-filed lead (should be promoted to Casting Director) or a legitimate secondary/specialist credit (belongs in the department). We checked, for each Casting-Department voice-casting credit, whether the same title also carries a Casting Director credit by a different person. 

Bare `voice casting` on animated titles (862 credits in Casting Department): - 565 (66%) are on titles with no main casting director at all — the voice-casting person genuinely is the casting lead. - Only 194 (23%) are on titles that already have a different main casting director.

Bare `voice casting` on non-animated titles (2,491 credits in Casting Department): - 2,134 (86%) are on titles that already have a different main casting director — i.e. these are typically a separate, specialist voice/dubbing-casting role on a live-action film that already has a full casting director. - Only 339 have no main casting director.

`voice casting director` in Casting Department (148 credits) splits similarly — the mis-filed ones on animated titles mostly (18 of 68) have no main CD, while the non-animated ones mostly (53 of 80) sit alongside a different main CD.

Interpretation: - On animated titles, the voice-casting credit is usually the only casting lead, so promoting it to Casting Director is clearly correct. - On non-animated titles, it usually sits alongside an existing main casting director, so it is more likely a legitimate specialist department credit — promoting it risks creating two competing "main casting" credits on the same title. Animated examples where bare `voice casting` is the sole casting lead include Minions (2015), Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) and Berserk: Ougon jidai-hen III (2013).

Recommendation

Tier 1 — clear correction (~1,010 credits): - All 148 `voice casting director` credits currently in Casting Department → Casting Director. Unambiguous headline role, small and safe, animation-heavy. - The 862 animated `voice casting` credits → Casting Director, most strongly the 565 on titles with no other main casting director (the voice-casting person is the casting lead). 

Tier 2 — hold for policy decision (~2,499 credits): - Non-animated bare `voice casting` (2,499), of which 2,134 sit alongside a different main casting director. Recommend a policy call before moving: on live-action titles with an existing CD these are likely legitimate specialist/secondary department credits, not mis-filed leads. A blanket promotion here risks creating duplicate/competing "main casting" credits. 

Not in scope (leave as-is): the 22,252 `adr voice casting` / loop-group / walla credits — correctly in Casting Department. 

This is a fair assessment of the situation, thank you for responding quickly.