Tag Archives: Actor training

Guest Post: How to Record a Dialect Donor

Posted on September 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

One of the best ways to ensure that you have all the materials you’ll need to learn a particular dialect is to make the effort to find someone who speaks with exactly the accent you have in mind and record them following specific guidelines. I’ve written two posts on this topic in the past: Finding a Dialect Donor and How to Interview a Dialect Donor. Today’s post written by recording engineer Tim Keenan of CreativeMediaRecording.com covers the final piece of the puzzle — the technical aspects of recording your donor.

Recalling my own awkward early attempts at recording donors outside of a studio setting, I asked Mr. Keenan to share some advice that can help ensure that you don’t have to make all of the mistakes I did before you can achieve useful recordings. Here’s what he has to say on this topic:

You don’t have to be a recording engineer to capture good quality audio recordings in any reasonably quiet environment and store them them on your computer as MP3s for future reference. If you don’t already own a portable digital recorder there has never been a better time to buy. Even the basic Zoom H1 digital recorder with a street price of $99.00 will do a decent job. It has built-in microphones or you can use an external mic. An added bonus is that you can even use this same device to record voiceover auditions, drag and drop the files to your computer and email them out as MP3s.

If you have the budget, take a look at the other models with more bells and whistles but a similar digital performance. Lots of equipment resources are out there but I like the folks at http://bswusa.com/ for their selection, helpful advice and pricing.

The two things to consider when recording at a remote location are the recording environment (where to set up) and the actual recording process (placing the mic, etc.).

The Environment:

First of all you want as quiet a room as possible away from kids, phones, animals and distractions. Looks for rooms with carpet, drapes and overstuffed furniture to help minimize room reflections. Make sure the person you are interviewing will be sitting in a comfortable place where they won’t move around much. Stay as far away from windows as you can and shut the drapes. The microphone will also pick up noises behind the subject as well so a good way to eliminate background noises is to position your interviewee with their backs away from windows, fans and other noise sources.

The interview subject should remove any noisy jewelry and bracelets. Try to minimize any paper they’ll be handling so you don’t have to worry about paper noise and hand fidgeting. All of those noises will detract from the final recording.

The Process:

I recommend a microphone stand to help you position the recording device as close to the subject as possible without being a distraction. Ideally you want the mic to be no more than 12 inches away (give or take) from the interviewee’s mouth.

*Very Important* Wear an ear bud in one ear to monitor the recording process. Listen for the sounds in the room – sounds like fans and other noises that will interfere with hearing your interview subject clearly. Wearing headphones is sometimes the only way you’ll actually notice these ambient sounds.

Pamela has some great tips for questions to ask to put your subject at ease. A good technique is to start by talking about local restaurants or recent movies to put your subject at ease and conversing comfortably. Use the first few questions to really listen and make sure the recording sounds clean and to note any distracting background room noises. Then you can then move into the meat of the interview.

Be sure to do some practice interviews with friends and family to get familiar with the equipment and how to best position everything to gain optimal sound. That way you’ll look like a pro when you go to capture the real thing and won’t waste any time getting what you need.

Tim Keenan is a long time recording engineer, voice talent and owner of CreativeMediaRecording.com an Orange County, CA based media studio specializing in voice recording and editing. On Twitter with tips & tricks for voiceover folks @tjkeenan and tips on recording & audio for video @Soundtrack_Pro

Myth du Jour: Actors Need General American Accents

Posted on September 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

Myth: To work regularly, you need to be able to speak in a General American Accent.

Reality: The reality of this situation is that for each and every actor the rules are different. (Doesn’t seem fair, I know. Sorry ’bout that.)

It comes down to this– the way you speak is one essential component of your unique, complex acting product and if you take the time to harmonize your speech skills to the rest of your acting product, you can maximize your casting opportunities. The General American accent itself contains no magic. It’s just a tool. If the General American accent ‘tool’ fits well with your acting career, great. Use it. If there are other tools (other accents) that fit better, stop fretting over the General American accent and make sure you master those accents so that you can find yourself booking jobs more frequently.

If you are dubious about my claim, I encourage you to take a few minutes and make a list of all the high-profile actors you can think of that don’t use a General American accent very often (or ever) in their careers. There are plenty of them. There are also plenty for whom a General American accent is indispensable. Your challenge as an actor is to figure out into which category your own acting product logically falls and take action as needed.

Here are some places to start if the idea of thinking about your acting product/image/essence/brand (whatever you’d like to call it) is new to you.

1) You may find value in this blog post I wrote earlier this year.

2) You may benefit from attending personal brand workshops such as those taught by Sam Christensen in Los Angeles and NYC. (If you live outside these cities, you can see clips of Sam’s work on YouTube.)

3) You may wish to invest in a dialect fitting with a qualified dialect consultant who specializes in such matters.

I hope you’ll enjoy this part of your journey. If you have questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me here in the comments section or at dialect411 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Speech Class: Vowels and Consonants

Posted on September 9, 2010 | 1 comment

I’m not going to try to hide it from you. Today’s post isn’t light reading. It’s equivalent to an hour’s worth of private coaching, or a session in an acting conservatory classroom. The upside is that this post is free which will save you anywhere from $75 -$200 in coaching fees, or even more when compared to the cost of prestigious private acting conservatories. (Cha-ching!)

If you are fairly new to learning authentic, actable dialects, it can be very helpful to know a few terms before you head off to hire a dialect coach. Familiarity with common linguistics terms will make communicating with your coach easy, and it can help you to quickly get your bearings if you find yourself in the unhappy situation of having no access to a coach and thus being limited to working with commercial dialect acquisition CD’s.

To get the most out of today’s lesson on vowels and consonants, you may find it valuable to glance back at this post explaining the difference between written and spoken language, and this post that elucidates the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds of speech, and this post which will give you a good understanding of the body parts responsible for speech sounds.

Today I want to share with you a few things about vowels and consonants—exactly what they are, how you can tell if a sound you’ve never heard before is a vowel or a consonant, and I’ll even a throw in a bit of acting theory related to these two groups of sounds.

First, a basic definition: In the arena of spoken language, linguists consider a speech sound to be a vowel if it is comprised of an uninterrupted, unimpeded voiced stream of air. On the other hand, a speech sound is considered to be a consonant when that sound is a voiced or voiceless stream of air that is stopped, impeded, or interrupted in some way by the articulators.

If you are not keen on wordy definitions, here are some more ways to think about these two groupings:

Vowel= unimpeded or uninterrupted voiced stream of air.

Consonant = voiced (or unvoiced!) stream of air that is somehow interrupted, impeded or stopped.

We could even go out on a limb and say that vowels are more static in nature, and consonants are more dynamic…

Here’s why:

When you happen to speak a sound that has been classified as a vowel, you’ll find that you can do so without moving any of your articulators during the creation of the sound, and you’ll also notice that your articulators aren’t constricting your breath channel enough to cause audible friction.

I want you to try a little experiment, but you’ll need to learn a tiny bit of the IPA (The International Phonetic Alphabet) to do so, so here is the International Phonetic Association‘s Vowel chart which shows all of the vowels that are used in the many languages on Earth.

If you are curious about exactly what sounds each of these symbols represent, you can go here and listen to dialect coach Paul Meier pronounce them for you using a nifty interactive version of this chart that he and coach Eric Armstrong co-created. There are also other interactive versions available on line. If you listen to several, you’ll begin to notice where the IPA chart leaves off and the human element comes in…

For now, merely notice the very first symbol in the upper left-hand corner. It looks like this —>[i]. If you happen to speak in a General or Standard American accent, this symbol represents the sound you’d use in words such as ‘flea, me, sweep, greedy, and easy.’ (If you don’t happen to speak in a General or Standard American accent, now might be a good time to check out Mr. Meier’s/Mr. Armstrong’s interactive vowel chart and listen to this sound.)

Now for the experiment: I want you take a few moments to speak the sound [i] in a sustained way…sort of like a monk chanting…any note you want to use is fine…just speak [i] in a sustained way for as long as your breath allows. Then do it again and as you do, allow your mind’s eye to focus on your articulators (your jaw, your tongue, your teeth, your soft and hard palate, your gum ridge etc.). Notice how they don’t have to change position at all while you are making this [i] sound? That’s one of the hallmarks of a vowel sound. You can take up the position of a vowel sound and then remain in that position as you send a voiced stream of air through the shape you’ve created with your articulators. No moving necessary speech-wise. (You will of course have movement within your body in order to exhale the air you need to vocalize, and so that you can engage your vocal folds, but we can safely categorize these as movement needed for vocal production rather than movement required for speech.)

See? Vowels have a sort of static quality to them.

Consonants on the other hand will involve some combination of articulators to be moving, or to be placed in such close proximity as to cause audible friction.

Here comes another chart from the International Phonetic Association…This one is dedicated to consonants (not all of them, though). I’m sharing it with you not to overwhelm you, but in an attempt to be as precise about our discussion as possible. (This blog has readers from around the globe, so it would be folly to assume that everyone’s idea of how to pronounce a particular written word will be similar…Please don’t get scared off by this chart!)

Again, let’s start by looking at the upper left hand corner. See that lower-case P sort of symbol —>[p]? If you happen to speak General or Standard American English this is the unvoiced sound you’d speak in words like ‘promise, pepper, apt, sleepy and deep.’ If you’d like to hear this sound pronounced, Paul Meier can help you out here.

Experiment time again: I’d like you to try pronouncing this sound and sustaining it like you did earlier with [i]… Go ahead… Give it a whirl… Try to chant like a monk using a [p] sound…Can’t do it, can you? Me neither. It’s just not possible. The speech sound [p] can’t be sustained because it is a sound that is ‘stopped’ ‘impeded’ or ‘interrupted.’ Say [p] a few more times. (You might find that you end up adding a voiced ‘uh’ kind of sound right after it out of habit. Don’t worry too much about that right now.) Instead, send your mind’s eye to what’s happening with your lips… Say [p]… Can you say it without moving your lips? Nope. [p] is a consonant alright. A voiceless, stopped consonant that ends in a little mini-explosion of air. Pretty dynamic!

Take a look back at the IPA consonant chart. Near the center of the chart you will find something that looks like a lower case ‘S’—> [s]. If you happen to speak General or Standard American English, this symbol represents the voiceless sound you’d use in words such as ‘sea, storm, essay, east, and less.’ (Check with Mr. Meier here if you’d like to hear this sound.)

One more experiment: Try to speak a sustained [s] sound. How long can you sustain it? As long as you have breath exhaling from your lungs, right? Try another sustained [s] sound and as you do, send your mind’s eye to your articulators… Notice how they don’t have to move once they are in position for the [s]? [s] happens to be an example of a voiceless, impeded (but not stopped!) consonant. As you say [s] two of your articulators (your tongue and your gum ridge) are in such close proximity that audible friction occurs. We can consider that friction to be dynamic.

Okay, enough tech talk! If you’re still here, I commend you! (If we were in a room together right now, I’d be passing out celebratory cookies, so consider yourself virtually cookied!)

At the beginning of this post I promised you a little vowel and consonant theory, so here it is…

Many people assert that at the core of the matter, the informational content of a person’s spoken message is contained in the consonant sounds, while the emotional content of the message rides out on the vowel sounds.

(Yeah, go ahead. Read it again. Let it sink in.)

Information loves a consonant, Emotion seeks a vowel…

I’ll leave you now, but with some questions to ponder and then talk about over tea. (And if you’d rather wax poetic in my comments section, have at it!)

Knowing what you know now about vowels and consonants, why do you think that that many people have come to the conclusion above?

Do you agree with this conclusion, and if so, how might you take advantage of this idea in your craft?

Joy to you,

Pamela

1 Comment

Posted in Phonetics (The IPA), Speech and Articulation Lessons

Tagged accent, accent acquisition, acting, actor skills, Actor training, how to learn an accent, learning an accent, linguistics, vowels and consonants

Learning a Dialect: Five Ways to Squeeze in the Time

Posted on September 2, 2010 | 1 comment

Becoming convincing in a dialect and being able to maintain that convincing nature while acting in a film or play doesn’t happen overnight. Even when you are familiar with the most effective dialect acquisition techniques available on this pretty blue planet, learning a dialect is still going to take a bite out of your schedule.

How much of a bite? It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly, but it’s a smart move to budget a few hours per day for anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks. For now let’s assume two hours per day for six weeks…that comes to 84 hours.

So, it’s going to take around 84 hours to master an unfamiliar dialect…

Wowza.

It’s in realizing this that most actors decide to put off their dialect aspirations.

After all, who’s got 84 extra hours?

Believe it or not, you do.

Really, you do.

You just need to be clever about it.

Here are five clever ways to sneak a little dialect work into your skill set without wreaking havoc on your life:

1) Listen while you commute. Many actors report that driving while listening to dialect source materials on the stereo not only allows them to squeeze in an hour or more of practice per day, but also has a calming effect during traffic jams. If cars aren’t your thing, try wearing headphones on the train or subway. You may not feel as comfortable responding aloud to your recordings, but you can at least listen for details. If you are fortunate enough to have created recordings for yourself that have long interview sessions with a dialect donor, public transportation commutes can be a convenient time to listen to those.

2) Listen while you work out. If your daily workout includes walking, swap out your Lady Gaga recordings for your dialect materials. (Do be careful walking around wearing headphones. Remain aware of your surroundings!) With the advent of cell-phones with ear pods, even if you happen to be responding aloud to your dialect recordings, most people who pass by you will assume you are on the phone.

3) Listen on your way to lullaby land. Head to sleep 15 minutes early and squeeze a little practice in then. There have been no formal studies done as of yet to directly verify this, but since dreams appear to be our way of processing the events and information of our lives, it seems to follow that practicing a dialect as you drift off could have its benefits.

4) Listen while you do housework. Simple tasks such as folding laundry, sweeping the floor or deadheading roses provide great opportunities to practice your dialect. (And it won’t add a single minute to your busy schedule!)

5) Listen in lines and lobbies. When you have a wait ahead of you, even if it’s only going to be five minutes, try listening to your dialect materials. Learning a dialect requires consistent exposure over time, so every little bit counts.

Annnnnd a bonus idea…

6) Listen while you relax. This one’s not necessarily a time saver, but I mention it because some actors report that they learn more quickly when they work on their dialect in a relaxing environment. Consider donning your ear buds and heading out to swing in a hammock or lie on the beach, or try working on your dialect while you enjoy a hot bath. (Safely please.)

1 Comment

Posted in Dialects and Your Acting Career, Learning A Dialect

Tagged accent, actor skills, Actor training, dialect, how to learn a dialect, how to learn an accent, learn a dialect, learning a dialect, learning an accent

Speech Class– An Exercise in Listening

Posted on July 13, 2010 | 1 comment

I promise this will only take a minute:

Grab your iPhone, computer or any semi-decent recording device, head to a quiet corner, and record yourself saying the following words. Speak them as you normally would…just be sure to take your time and leave some space in between each of the words. (Read aloud the titles of each list too.)

List One

Something — Some King — Something — Some King

Nothing — A Thing — Nothing — A Thing

Humming — It’s a Ming — Humming — It’s a Ming

Mooning — Mood Ring — Mooning — Mood Ring

Drawing– A Wing — Drawing– A Wing

List Two

Fleece — Fleas — Fleece — Fleas

decrease — decrees– decrease — decrees

faces — phases — faces — phases

peace — peas — peace — peas

List Three

Slaw — slot — Slavic

Walk — Wok — Wasabi

Sawed — Sod — Facade

Tall — Tom — Taco

Excellent! If you’ve recorded these, I invite you to read on. If you haven’t recorded these yet, then I invite you to stop reading now and do so. I know it’s hard to resist reading onward, but trust me, it’ll be worth it to wait until you’ve recorded the word lists.

(No peeking if you haven’t finished recording the lists…)

Once you’ve recorded these lists, the next step is to play the recordings you just made and listen for the specific sounds I suggest here:

For List One — Close your eyes and listen. Do all of the words that happen to be spelled with an -ing sound the same during the -ing part? Or for you is there a slight difference between the way you pronounced the ‘ing in ‘something‘ vs. the way you pronounced it in ‘some king‘? If so, what is that difference? How are you physically creating that sound difference? What is your tongue doing? Which part of your tongue is doing it? The front? Middle? Back? If you happened to pronounce all of these words using the same final sound, can you remember hearing someone else pronounce these word sets using two different pronunciations for the -ing parts? Can you smoothly copy that way of speaking? Make it your own? If you used two different sounds, what would it be like to apply one of those sounds to both words in each set? And then apply the other sound?

For List Two — Pay particular attention to the way you pronounced the final sounds of these words. Do all of the words on the list end with the same sound? Or is something else happening? Can you find a pattern? Does the first word in each pair end with an ‘s’ sort of sound, and the second word in each pair end with a ‘z’ sort of sound? If so, is the ‘z’ fully voiced and really buzzing or is it kind of a soft ‘z’ sound? What happens if you play around with the amount of voicing you give to the final s/z sound in ‘fleas’ ‘decrees’ ‘fazes’ and ‘peas’? How many subtle variations can you find in there?

For List Three — Closing your eyes may really help with this one– For this list, I want you to focus on listening carefully to the vowel sounds in each of the words. When you said ‘slaw’ did it have the exact same vowel sound as when you said ‘slot’? How about when you said ‘Slavic?’ Do all of these words contain the same vowel sound? Or for you are there 3 different vowel sounds in these sets? Are there two? Can you figure out how you are actually creating each of those sounds? During each of these vowel sounds, what is your tongue doing? Your jaw? Your lips? If you used more than one vowel sound for these words, see what happens if you try saying all of the words using only the vowel sound you used in ‘Slavic’ and ‘Facade.’

At this point I’m getting the feeling that you might want me to quit yakking and just get to the point and tell you which way is the ‘right’ way of speaking each of these word sets, so you can get to work ‘fixing’ any problems.

I can’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the desire. After all, most of us would like the security of being ‘right’–it feels good. Keep in mind though, that as an actor, it is more useful to you to adopt the mindset that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of speaking. Leave all general judgements aside. As an actor, how ‘best’ to speak a word will be entirely dependent on the project you are in and on the character you are playing. (Remember a while back I mentioned that good speech is simply speech that gets you what you want?)

Exercises such as the one above are not intended to endorse a particular way of speaking, but rather to sharpen your observational skills so that when you are called upon to speak in a manner other than your own, the path from where you are to where you want to be will be easy to see and enjoyable to traverse.

Questions? Send ’em in. I’m here to help!

1 Comment

Posted in Speech and Articulation Lessons

Tagged accent, actor skills, Actor training, dialect, speech

Finding a Dialect Donor

Posted on July 1, 2010 | 2 comments

Back on April 15th I suggested that one way to improve your casting opportunities would be to determine which of the world’s dialects would be a nice fit for your particular acting career. Whether you used the how-to steps I provided in that post, or whether you consulted with a dialect coach who specializes in dialect fittings, you might now find yourself ready for the next step: shopping for or recording your own dialect resource materials.

You can always hire a qualified dialect coach to record and edit materials for you, but if you would like the satisfaction of doing it yourself, here are a few ideas about where to find pre-recorded materials and/or people that you can interview and record on your own. (I promise to share with you the secrets of how to approach and interview a dialect donor in an upcoming post!)

1) The Internet— Dialect collection and preservation sites such as IDEA and the British Library offer a wide variety of recordings of people from around the world, all speaking English. (Caveat: Using such a site to find a pre-recorded sample that suits your needs can save you time, but in doing so you may have to sacrifice the flexibility and control that you would have had if you took the time to find and interview a subject yourself.) As I mentioned in my last post, if you’re mindful YouTube can yield some relevant resources and some contacts to boot. Googling around for particular language names or dialect names can also sometimes yield a useful dialect or language contact or two.

2) Clubs and Organizations— There are clubs devoted to celebrating nearly every ethnic background on the planet. In addition, certain clubs may attract people who hail from certain locations. A club dedicated to Japanese flower arranging for instance, may have at least a few members from Japan. A trick riding club may yield some Montanan, or Texan members. Not everyone in a ‘We Love Switzerland’ club will be Swiss, but you can bet someone in the club knows someone from Switzerland and can put you in touch with them.

3) Places of Worship— The Roman Catholic church can be a great place to find dialect donors, as priests are often brought in from faraway places -(Ireland, Africa, and Mexico to name a few). Synagogues will sometimes yield donors with Russian, German, Yiddish or New York dialects. Buddhist temples can help you locate speakers with many different dialects such as Thai, Chinese, or Japanese. Certain mosques might be able to lead you to donors with Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Jordanian, Sudanese, or many other Middle Eastern and Northern African accents. When approaching places of worship, be sure to do some mindful research about beliefs and customs, so that you don’t unintentionally offend anyone.

4) Colleges— Check your local college faculty listings for potential donors from around the world. In addition to faculty members, you may be able to connect with the foreign student advisor and let them know you are looking for help with a certain dialect. They may permit you to post a ‘wanted’ sign, or even put you in touch directly with just the donor you are looking for.

5) Museums— If you have a local museum that specializes in the art and culture of a particular region, you may be able to find contacts through one of their curators, or you may even meet someone at a special event. A night of plays written by Native American playwrights might mean that there’s a chance someone from the Crow Nation will be in attendance. At the very least, your program will be filled with potential Native American contacts who might help you with your search.

6) Festivals— Festivals such as Irish, Indian, Greek, or Polynesian draw enormous crowds of people and performers, some of whom may have just the sound you’re looking for. You just have to be outgoing and connect with them!

7) Towns within Towns-— Little Armenia, Chinatown, Little Africa, Korea Town etc. Most larger cities have areas a block or two wide where there are businesses devoted to the goods from certain geographical locations. Often the shopkeepers in these stores are good potential interviewees or can put in touch with someone.

8 ) Foreign Consulates— Foreign consulates can be very helpful if you’ve searched everywhere and are coming up empty-handed. Simply call a consulate, let them know you are preparing to play a role and find out if there’s someone there who might like to volunteer to help you for an hour or so.

9) Everywhere— This method takes a little longer, and I admit it is pretty random, but you may wish to consider keeping dialect and language notes on all of your new personal contacts. If you keep your contact information in a searchable database (such as Mac’s Address Book), jotting a few notes like ‘her mother is from Mongolia’ or ‘he was born and raised on the Nisqually Indian Reservation‘ can help you later find the person you need for a project with only a few keystrokes. Very handy.

I hope these ideas will give you a place to begin your next dialect adventure.

Do you have other ideas to share? Leave a comment below! (I love comments!)

2 Comments

Posted in Learning A Dialect

Tagged accent, accent acquisition, acting, actor skills, Actor training, dialect, Dialect Donor, how to learn an accent, learning an accent

Real Housewives of New Jersey

Posted on June 8, 2010 | 1 comment

Yesterday there was so much hubbub on Twitter about little Gia’s accent on ‘The Real Housewives of New Jersey’ that I Hulu’d (Hulu.com) the show (Season 2, Episode 6) this morning to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

Now I’m hoping that you will do the same because regardless of your opinion of the show, there’s a scene that as an actor, agent, manager or dialect coach, you simply need to see. I’ll explain a bit here, but truly you will get more from watching 90 seconds of this show than my words alone can ever reveal.

Starting at 16 minutes into the show, housewife Teresa takes her young daughter to visit with the child’s manager and the manager explains “There’s a couple of areas that we need to improve right now, um… the main focus being the Jersey Accent. She’s got it. You’ve got it. I’ve got it. We all have it. She is not booking things. For instance, you know…the Christian Slater movie, she didn’t book that. I think she could do better, you know if this situation is remedied at this point.”

She then goes on to request that the child pronounce the word ‘dog’ and when she does, the manager criticizes her pronunciation and states that ‘in reality’ it’s pronounced differently than Gia is pronouncing it. You can see the discomfort on both Gia and Teresa’s faces as they contemplate their need to be ‘remedied.’ They are then sent to work with a dialect coach who continues in a similar vein.

This 90 second clip is wonderful, as it clearly illustrates a difficult situation that plays out every day in the entertainment industry.

***An agent or manager wants to help their client book more jobs, and they see that adding a dialect might help, only their personal bias regarding dialects coupled with a lack of effective wording inadvertently leaves the client feeling attacked.

***The client also wants to book more jobs, but upon hearing that they need to be ‘remedied,’ becomes closed and defensive. Even if they do seek the help of a competent dialect professional, they will not be in a very good frame of mind for adding a new dialect to their skill set.

***The dialect coach approaches the target dialect piecemeal, teaching a sound here, a word there, in whatever order the coach decides might be effective. The client can’t ‘hear’ what they are trying to teach and becomes frustrated.

Clearly, this system is broken.

Everyone wants the same thing–They want the actor to book more jobs–but the means being used to try to reach the goal are ineffective and even counterproductive.

Change is clearly needed.

Personally, I am a firm believer that change starts with the individual. I believe that each of us who can see a problem, must contribute to a solution if we expect to actually reach one. For today’s problem, my contribution is to continue to write this blog, and to network like crazy in order to make sure that every single day at least one more actor, agent, manager, casting director or director reads it and learns something that helps their career run more smoothly. My absolute dream is that every actor in SAG has a subscription to Dialect411.com and learns all they need to know about how dialect work fits into their career, as well as how to prepare to work with a dialect professional privately or on set, so that every production has an even better chance of becoming a true work of cinematic genius than it does today.

If you too would like to contribute to improving communication and outcome in the arena of voice and dialect work, but don’t know what you can do to help, here are some suggestions:

If you are an agent, manager or casting director: When you suspect that an actor might benefit from learning a General American (or any other) accent, resolve to use positive words to express this to them. Keep in mind that ‘losing’ or ‘permanently modifying’ an accent is generally not a lucrative move, and that General American speech is not superior to any other dialect on this planet. The manager on ‘Housewives’ would have done better to say something like “The reason I brought you in today is because I realized that we can make Gia eligible for more roles if she learns a General American accent in addition to her fabulous New Jersey accent. What do you think of that idea?” (I am quite confident that if the manager would have used words similar to these, the result would have been an excited young actress, rather than the sullen one we see in the show.)

If you are an actor: First, my advice is to make an effort to become educated about dialects, because they will almost surely come into play in your career at some point. Of course if you are making time to read this blog twice a week, you’re off to a good start. In addition, work at developing a long-term relationship with a qualified dialect coach(My May 4, 2010 post will help you know what to look for). Lastly, learn to ‘translate’ for the people (agents, managers, casting directors and directors) that may be well meaning, but might phrase things a bit negatively. Work hard not to take it personally. Try to look past the unfortunate choice of words and hear that these people are just trying to help you.

If you are a dialect coach: Remember that a normative approach to speech does not serve the acting community. You may personally prefer a particular dialect, but that doesn’t mean that that dialect will necessarily suit a particular actor’s career. As I discussed in last Thursday’s blog post, there really is no single ‘right’ way to speak. Good speech is simply speech that gets you what you want. In addition, when working with a client who may have had an experience similar to the one this young actress had on ‘Housewives,’ be mindful that they might be arriving to you a little emotionally ‘beat up’ and they may have the idea that something is wrong with them. Help your client to be as creative and responsive to the dialect sessions as possible by always being clear that you are teaching them to add a skill rather than to remove a problem. It can also help to be very mindful of your coaching language. I go so far as to try to avoid using the word ‘right’ when giving a client feedback on their pronunciation attempts. I endeavor to say ‘good match’ instead, just so there is no question about one dialect being superior to another.

To all of you who are willing to pitch in to make this part of our industry run more smoothly– thank you, thank you, thank you!!! If you have more ideas that you think might help, please post them in the comments section!

Lastly, I never imagined I would be saying this, but ‘Thank you, Real Housewives of New Jersey! You really gave me something to think about!’

******** Oh! Remember that each week in June I’m giving away complimentary dialect fittings to three lucky subscribers! To be eligible, all you need to do is subscribe via e-mail (see subscription button at upper right of screen.) For more details, go here.*********

1 Comment

Posted in Dialects and Your Acting Career, FOR AGENTS, MANAGERS & CASTING ENTITIES, FOR THEATRE & PRODUCTION COMPANIES

Tagged accent, accent acquisition, Accent reduction, acting career, actor skills, Actor training, actress, business of acting, casting, Casting Director, dialect, how to learn an accent, Real Housewives, Real Housewives of New Jersey

The Truth

Posted on May 27, 2010 | 1 comment

Everyone tells you. Your acting coach. Your publicist. Your agent. Your manager.

Don’t lie on your resume because a lie will eventually come back to haunt you.

It’s very good advice, and if you’re a working actor, you probably took this advice to heart long ago.

But here’s the thing—What if you don’t realize that there’s a lie on your resume? What if, for instance, you have listed in your skills section ‘Dialects: British RP, Cockney, American Southern, New York, Irish’ because six years ago you were enrolled in a respected acting conservatory where those dialects were taught as part of the curriculum?

And you got an ‘A’ in the class?

And your instructor told you that you were ‘really good with accents?’

That sounds fantastic!

But —

When was the last time you actually tested any of these skills?

When was the last time you recorded yourself acting while using your New York dialect and had that recording analyzed by a professional dialect coach?

When did you last walk into an Irish bar and successfully convince the Irish patrons that you were from Kilkenny?

If you want to be a competitive actor, any skill (dialect or otherwise) that isn’t performance ready today should be removed from your resume until you have given it a thorough tune-up and put it to the test…

…because even an accidental lie will eventually come back to haunt you.

1 Comment

Posted in Dialects and Your Acting Career, FOR AGENTS, MANAGERS & CASTING ENTITIES

Tagged accent, accent acquisition, acting, acting career, actor resume, actor skills, Actor training, business of acting, dialect coach, Kilkenny

Theatre Companies: Put Your Money Where The Mouths Are

Posted on May 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

Word of mouth is the single biggest contributor to a play’s success. Nothing gets people into seats faster than a good personal recommendation. No well-designed postcard or billboard can begin to compete. People want to hear about your play from someone they trust—a friend, co-worker, or even a respected theatre reviewer.

A metropolitan city such as Los Angeles may have a dozen or more union theatres and many dozens of equity waiver venues for an audience member to choose from on any given night. Without exception, great productions draw great audiences. Good ones on the other hand, can leave a theatre struggling for revenue.

When the historic Pasadena Playhouse closed it’s doors earlier this year, many venues began to re-think their product and practices. After all, if a ‘good’ theatre such as this was forced to consider Chapter 11, what danger would the other venues be facing? It became glaringly obvious that theatre-goers were going to be very judicious with their funds and that theatres would have to try harder to remain in business.

Recently, in order to create more value for theatre patrons, lobbies have been spruced up, houses have been made more comfortable with seating repairs and air-conditioning overhauls, and special events have been planned in conjunction with performances. I’m also noticing that restrooms are being kept cleaner and made as welcoming as possible with flowers and flattering light. Even snack bars are seeing an upgrade. Alongside box-store water and nacho chips, one can now find the likes of Metro Mint Water and Bumble Bars. All of these details have been honed in an effort to bring superb value to the theatre patron, and to inspire positive word of mouth.

There’s one tactic though, that so far only a few venues have had the savvy to pursue— that is to modify casting and rehearsal practices in order to achieve a higher quality product overall, especially when it comes to integrating dialect into performance. The changes these select venues are making are simple, extremely cost effective and can boost a production from ‘good’ to ‘great.’ Personally, I think everyone should know about them.

Here are the practices those at the leading edge are adopting:

1) Keeping a dialect consultant on staff to review the theatre’s entire season of scripts and to alert the production team of voice and speech challenges they may be facing in mounting certain plays. In this context, the dialect consultant typically provides detailed reports and custom written and recorded dialect acquisition materials.

2) Including a dialect consultant as a central part of the casting process. (A dialect consultant can quickly determine an actor’s dialect abilities and help save a theatre from casting an actor whose limited skills might negatively affect the rehearsal process or prompt a bad review.)

3) Providing actors with MP3’s of the target dialect along with the audition sides, so those who audition can properly prepare.

4) Casting only the actors who accurately present the target dialect during auditions, or barring that, planning adequate time between casting and the first read-through for actors to master the dialect with the help of the production’s dialect coach. (Learning a dialect takes time, no matter what an actor’s skill level is. Not even dialect maven Meryl Streep walks onto a set without substantial preparation.)

5) Membership companies are making training a central part of their mission. For instance, if a play requires a Baton Rouge accent, the entire company is given access to group dialect classes months in advance of auditions. (This not only creates value for the theatre patrons in the form of a better show, but it also creates value for the company members in the form of new skills for their resumes.)

Final note: I love Metro Mint Water, comfy seats, and after-show soirees, but I feel it deeply in my bones that these lovely gestures alone will not be enough to keep audiences buzzing about live theatre. Only exceptional work onstage can inspire this kind of response.

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Tag Archives: Actor training

Guest Post: How to Record a Dialect Donor

Myth du Jour: Actors Need General American Accents

Speech Class: Vowels and Consonants

Learning a Dialect: Five Ways to Squeeze in the Time

Top Ten Dialect Posts

Speech Class– An Exercise in Listening

Finding a Dialect Donor

Real Housewives of New Jersey

The Truth

Theatre Companies: Put Your Money Where The Mouths Are

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