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Phonetics is not really about symbols on paper
Spelling reformer Henry Sweet circa 1900. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. You’ve probably heard of the IPA. (That’s the International Phonetic Alphabet, not India Pale Ale.) The IPA was devised largely by...
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“Dude! Your goose is named after a punctuation mark. What gives?”
So, I’m on the set of ABC’s Pan Am standing in the little cast enclave across from the plane set. It is late in the day. One actor is learning his lines for the next episode. Others are alternately...
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Does The Queen say WHich and WHether?
Next time people look down their noses at you because of the way you pronounce a word, know this. Where at least one sound, ‘wh’, is concerned, those same people might sometimes find their...
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Say, Cheese!
People come up with all sorts of generalizations about why cultures differ. For instance, I have often heard that Japanese people don’t smile for photos because they don’t like to show emotion. That...
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Dialect bigotry comes from regular old bigotry
Remember the scene in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain where we first hear Lina Lamont turn talkie in this period piece set in 1927 Hollywood? Remember her asking, “What’s wrong with the way I talk. What’s...
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Dialect, character and mask
Masks have been part of many theatrical traditions: ancient Greek theatre, mystery plays, commedia, neutral mask, Noh and Chinese opera, to name a few — as well as many largely ritualistic traditions...
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Acting, public speaking and the illusion of spontaneity
I judged a speech contest recently. The contestant who placed first was the only one who spoke entirely extemporaneously — who had planned the structure of his speech, but did not memorize it, read it...
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Post-production supervisors, audio post-production engineers, dialogue editors and ADR editors, listen up! Here are 5 tricks from acoustic phonetics you can try on your own when you need to reduce or...
View ArticleBuyer beware! What do you need to know when casting dialect and language parts?
Most people in the business are sufficiently skeptical about a great many things, except, oddly, when budding actors list dialects under SPECIAL SKILLS. Certainly, some actors have serious dialect...
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Foreign language crisis? Don’t just fetch a native speaker!
Foreign language crisis! Your script has a few lines — or even a few pages — of dialogue in Italian or French or Chinese or Japanese or Korean or Onondaga. (It’s an Haudenosaunee [Iroquoian] language....
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How to use a dialect coach on set
The first thing to remember is that ‘dialect coaching’ is just a newfangled and somewhat misleading title we use for dialogue coaching when an accent or language is involved. By dialogue coaching, I...
View ArticleEmbodied characters
Film crew on set, circa 1955. Courtesy Grant Crabtree and Wikimedia Commons. The voice from nowhere is a myth; everyone’s voice is recognizably specific. Characters are no exception. Not only will...
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