Your voice matters: Dubbing Academy Booth Camp Day 2

Feb 24, 2022

2 min read

DABC DAY 2

Knowing the significance of your voice matters as to how you connect with the audience who will hear or listen to the character voice you are doing as a dubber. The participants are all engaged with what our mentor, sir Danny "Ama" Mandia (the Father of modern dubbing shared with us. I will share my learnings with you from the first batch of DABC in this blog post.

Vocal Projection

It is very important to know sets of skills when doing dubbing. By Dubbing means giving other translation to the voice of the character as what is my own term.

The audience may not see you but they will hear you and your dubbing may affect how they interpret the character they're watching or listening to.

One of the good examples of vocal projection is to shout without peaking. Meaning controlling your voice, because the microphone can only interpret sound on numbers so if it peaks it is impossible to edit the audio and you have to repeat the lines again and it is very taxing the whole production.

It is also a skill that is heard clearly what you are saying even to the near exit doors of the auditorium without a mic.

So I guess you get the point :)

Proper enunciation of words

Of course, besides being able to project is to be clearly understood what you are talking about behind the microphone.

Pronounce the words clearly. Don't chew them.

My takeaway on this is that the most important instrument that you must have as a Dubber is yourself. Your voice!

Vocal Registry

Speaking of instruments, the human is also an instrument similar to a guitar, keyboard, whether it's a string, wind, or percussion instrument.

Human has 3 registers, the head tone or the top tone, facial or the mid-tone, and chest voice or the low tone.

These placements of voice have a unique and vital role in dubbing. When you reach head tone you can sound like a with or a kid, if mid-tone, you can sound natural or your normal speaking voice and when you hit low tone you may sound masculine or a monster.

What about day 1?

I knew you would ask that so here is my answer. Day 1 is an introductory session yet we learned a lot about different mentors/directors in the industry of dubbing. My key takeaways on Day 1 were to be always humble, listen to the director and be prepared, learn to be a good companion with others, and keep on learning and practicing.