China Stories

In the Dub.

9th Aug 2008, Gerald

The voice over sessions went really well.

It was so great to get rid of my boring old voice and get some proper narration in there. Xiao had said that she really liked our voices (mine, Maria's and we pulled in Bruce, Rhiannon, Rachel and whoever else happened to be in the office at the time) and so I told her to wait until the pro's were laid down. When the session was over she agreed that the pieces were much improved (in a nice way!).

It was a great couple of days, we had a bit of a laugh and got everything done in the studio time (and actor's time) we had booked. We had 6 actors in total and they were all very different. One of the big parts of my role in the voice over session is to direct the actor. This means telling them how I imagine things sound and maybe telling them what the people are like so that they can then read their lines as though the piece was about them. They always have suggestions too which is great- often you end up with something much better than the thing you had in your head.

Speaking of which, we did quite a bit of rewriting in the dub. This was because our translations often looked good on paper but when they were read aloud they sounded weird. So we rewrote them in a way that suited speaking as we went along. Bronek, our Dubbing Mixer, was a massive help here. He is coming to these pieces for the first time so if he hears something which sounds odd or doesn't make sense then he tells us and we can look at it again. Often when you are so involved in a programme you just can't see the things which aren't working because you haven't been able to take a step back and look and listen afresh.

It was also really important to have Xiao there to make sure that with our rewrites we didn't lose what the people originally said. Xiao has been really important during our time in post production. We just wouldn't have managed without her!

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