Dubbing your star
March 9th 2008 18:42
Let me introduce you to one of my future returning headings:
The Issue
In this section I will cover general or not so general themes of the movie business, that will try to grasp certain aspects of movie making and weave a thought around that theme. For the first edition it's about the dubbing procedure from a perhaps lesser known perspective, so please enjoy.
Dubbed movies. For the average audience B movies, poor voice acting and ridiculous dialogue comes in mind at first. There's truth to this, but much less if you change the language. What is a small and relatively unimportant part of the movie business in English speaking countries, has an own school of acting where foreign means English.
Many countries don't dub foreign films, subtitles are the natural solution. However in some places like in Germany or Hungary, dubbing has a larger role. It's interesting to guess why, but it would be even harder, than to find out why Finns like Heavy Metal. Point is that people like to hear their own language, and find reading subtitles distracting, a common attribute of many audiences. This demand gave birth to a dubbing culture that is virtually unknown in the US, since most mainstream films are in English. And a high demand means more people and a larger talent pool to gather from.
A tendency in Hungary in the last 4-5 decades shows that highly qualified actors, theatre actors give their voices to movie stars. The only US comparison would be when an actor gives his or her voice to a character in an animation movie, but you won't hear Eddie Murphy dubbing a foreign actor in a live action movie. Not the other way around! Since foreing movie cultures (non English) are still a small fish in the movie business, the players adapt, and it's not uncommon that an accomplished actor will be the recognized voice of large Hollywood movie stars. They can even voice a set of stars, and once the audience gets to like them, they will demand that specific voice. Dubbing directors will stick to the voice when a new movie comes out with that certain Hollywood actor. This way the same person could be the voice for Eddie Murphy, Michael Douglas and Bruce Willis. Yeah, that's right. One of the best Hungarian dubbing actors, György Dörner is usually the voice for these three, just to name some of his most famous roles.
And you can call those real roles. When actors voice an animated character, they act out as they visualize that role, and the animators draw the character around the performance. Now imagine that you're dubbing Robert De Niro or Anthony Hopkins. Or for that matter how do you approach an Eddie Murphy character and a Bruce Willis tough guy with the same set of tools, your voice? That's acting, that's playing a part. It's so much more than reading a translation. A voice actor will not only have to get in character, but also have to capture the visible actor, try to match the breathing pattern, mouth movement and so on.
What comes out at the end of that tunnel is sometimes average, decent, sometimes good, and in some cases brilliant. I dare to say this only softly: it's sometimes even better than the original performance. The result in these cases is an interesting blend of physical presence, visual acting and voice acting. Things get real twisted when the face and the voice welds together so well, that it becomes natural, more than the original voice of the actor. And remember, these are separate individuals.
It's unlikely that the English speaking movie world will experience this level of dub acting outside of animation. It could lead to interesting experiments though in filmmaking, and who knows? Maybe there will be a time when it will be hip for George Clooney to dub someone in a foreign indie film.
The Issue
In this section I will cover general or not so general themes of the movie business, that will try to grasp certain aspects of movie making and weave a thought around that theme. For the first edition it's about the dubbing procedure from a perhaps lesser known perspective, so please enjoy.
Dubbed movies. For the average audience B movies, poor voice acting and ridiculous dialogue comes in mind at first. There's truth to this, but much less if you change the language. What is a small and relatively unimportant part of the movie business in English speaking countries, has an own school of acting where foreign means English.
Many countries don't dub foreign films, subtitles are the natural solution. However in some places like in Germany or Hungary, dubbing has a larger role. It's interesting to guess why, but it would be even harder, than to find out why Finns like Heavy Metal. Point is that people like to hear their own language, and find reading subtitles distracting, a common attribute of many audiences. This demand gave birth to a dubbing culture that is virtually unknown in the US, since most mainstream films are in English. And a high demand means more people and a larger talent pool to gather from.
A tendency in Hungary in the last 4-5 decades shows that highly qualified actors, theatre actors give their voices to movie stars. The only US comparison would be when an actor gives his or her voice to a character in an animation movie, but you won't hear Eddie Murphy dubbing a foreign actor in a live action movie. Not the other way around! Since foreing movie cultures (non English) are still a small fish in the movie business, the players adapt, and it's not uncommon that an accomplished actor will be the recognized voice of large Hollywood movie stars. They can even voice a set of stars, and once the audience gets to like them, they will demand that specific voice. Dubbing directors will stick to the voice when a new movie comes out with that certain Hollywood actor. This way the same person could be the voice for Eddie Murphy, Michael Douglas and Bruce Willis. Yeah, that's right. One of the best Hungarian dubbing actors, György Dörner is usually the voice for these three, just to name some of his most famous roles.
György Dörner, Hungarian actor
And you can call those real roles. When actors voice an animated character, they act out as they visualize that role, and the animators draw the character around the performance. Now imagine that you're dubbing Robert De Niro or Anthony Hopkins. Or for that matter how do you approach an Eddie Murphy character and a Bruce Willis tough guy with the same set of tools, your voice? That's acting, that's playing a part. It's so much more than reading a translation. A voice actor will not only have to get in character, but also have to capture the visible actor, try to match the breathing pattern, mouth movement and so on.
What comes out at the end of that tunnel is sometimes average, decent, sometimes good, and in some cases brilliant. I dare to say this only softly: it's sometimes even better than the original performance. The result in these cases is an interesting blend of physical presence, visual acting and voice acting. Things get real twisted when the face and the voice welds together so well, that it becomes natural, more than the original voice of the actor. And remember, these are separate individuals.
It's unlikely that the English speaking movie world will experience this level of dub acting outside of animation. It could lead to interesting experiments though in filmmaking, and who knows? Maybe there will be a time when it will be hip for George Clooney to dub someone in a foreign indie film.
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Comment by Harry
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Do they advertise than a famous actor has done the dubbing to help sell the movie?
Comment by Bob Kovacs
Movie Stripe
As for live action it's not usual to name the dubbing actor in the ad. However they usually use the same actor for stars, as I mentioned, and people are expecting to hear them.
In majority of cases the dubbing actors are spoken out by a narrator in the opening or the end title sequence, when the cast is introduced.
Another unique thing is the use of this title narrator. In case of a dubbed movie, he (there are 2-3 regular men, like Mr. Voice in movie trailers) reads/presents the title (the Hungarian translation) the cast and the dubbing voice accordingly and the more important members of the crew: DoP, Music, Screenplay, Director. They announce these when the original writing appears on screen.
These few voices are regulars as well, and they get even more jobs
Oh yes, they also announce the people behind the dubbing: translator, the name of the dubbing studio, the dubbing director etc. These come usually at the end of the cast list in the title sequence.