Friday, August 25, 2006

Afghani voice-over.

I’m pretty enthusiastic about this gig. I won’t say very much about it because it’s obviously still in production and I won’t steal the thunder of what promises to be an excellent documentary (no, not just because I’m part of it). Suffice it to say, I auditioned and have been cast as the voice of an Afghani mother. Admittedly I was not very familiar with what Afghani accents sound like before my audition and did quite a bit of research to find out. What I found was a lot of variation in proficiency and degree of confidence in speaking English on the part of the native Afghani speakers, just as with any language of course, and felt I had a bit of leeway in what I could offer. Since there were 5 different parts to audition for I was able to show several styles of delivery, pace, and of course, accent. I had an email this evening that they “loved” my voice. We will be recording in New York in the fall.

In an earlier post, I wrote that Pat Fraley indicated that voice actors cannot expect a ton of accent work. That’s changing and he will be among the first to say so – in fact I got an email from him earlier in the week announcing that “More than any other time in the last TEN YEARS, accents and dialects are required for Animation, Games, and Audiobook jobs” and he will be offering a dialect class next month along with Larry Moss, dialect coach to the stars, Hillary Huber, renowned audiobook narrator and producer/recording engineer Andrew Morris. Now, I can’t be dropping everything and running off to Los Angeles every time Pat offers a class, much as I would love to, but it sure is a mouth-watering offer. Instead I will be taking a dialect class in the theatre department at the local university in the spring, and in the meantime hope to do a bit of private coaching with the professor who’s teaching it. I seem to be getting more and more opportunities to use the skills that I’ve been working on ever since I was a little kid and used to listen endlessly to my parents’ recording of British comedians Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett in Beyond the Fringe. I want to be as ready as I can be for every opportunity that comes along.

I have to say, I’m very proud to be working on this project on Afganistan and look forward to writing more about it as it becomes public. Hearing the news that I’m going to be a part of it was just a fantastic way to end the week.

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