00:00
I'm Ash Ketchum, I came from
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Pallet Town in the Kanto Region.
00:03
And this is my good buddy, Pikachu.
00:12
Hi, I'm Sarah Natochenny, I'm a voice actor.
00:14
You probably know me best as Ash Ketchum on Pokemon.
00:17
I'm also Delia Ketchum, and Staraptor, and Misdreavus.
00:24
Today I'm gonna be showing you my process
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for dubbing Pokemon into English.
00:28
Pokemon is a show that's originally
00:30
voiced and animated in Japan.
00:31
So when the show comes to me,
00:33
my job is to reinterpret it for an American audience.
00:36
We start every session with my director
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telling me all about the episode.
00:39
The turnaround time for these shows is extreme,
00:42
so sometimes we are working with scripts
00:44
that were finished the night before.
00:46
I never get to see the script ahead of time,
00:47
it's always a cold read.
00:49
Hi, I'm Lisa, the voice director.
00:51
And Ash, today you're gonna be running down the beach.
00:54
Yes! Gonna have some beach time.
00:57
I record in a booth by myself.
00:59
So I very rarely get to hear the other actors' performances.
01:02
My director is the dungeon master,
01:04
she knows how everything is gonna sound,
01:06
she can predict all of their performances,
01:08
and she knows exactly how to direct me
01:09
to get exactly what she wants.
01:11
Next we watch the scene in Japanese, let's take a look.
01:14
[speaking in foreign language]
01:21
[speaking in foreign language]
01:37
So a lot of stuff is happening in this scene.
01:39
He's running, he's out of breath, he's tripping over Litten.
01:42
And then he runs to his mom all excited and huffing.
01:45
And he's always huffing, he's always excited and huffing.
01:48
So I wanna do justice to that just with my voice.
01:51
So what I'm looking for when I see this in Japanese
01:54
is the mouth flap, where he moves his mouth.
01:56
Where he opens his mouth really wide,
01:58
where he has a [groan] like a clenched kinda teeth thing.
02:01
And that'll indicate to me where
02:02
to put all the words on the page.
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So first we're gonna do a whole run of the scene
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and then we're gonna go back
02:07
and pickup all the parts where I messed up.
02:09
We are on line 45. 'Kay.
02:13
It's gonna be on there, you won't beat me.
02:15
You are about to meet Litten for the first time.
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So this is where you're gonna keep running through
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over there as you saw in the scene.
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As soon as you get there you're gonna step on his tail
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and then you'll go into sorta like
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the comic tumbles after that.
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So let's give it a whirl.
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There are three beeps that cue me in.
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I come in on the fourth beep.
02:30
So Sarah, I'm gonna give you three beeps
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for the first cue, and then one beep for the following.
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So basically my eyes, if you notice,
02:51
are darting back and forth from the page to the screen
02:54
to make sure that I have the line right
02:56
and that I have the flap right at the same time.
02:59
So while I'm matching the flap
03:00
and getting all the words out,
03:01
I have to match the emotion that's happening onscreen.
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More so than the original performance.
03:07
So I'm looking at the animation
03:08
and figuring out how to emote based on that.
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So I look at his eyes, I look at his eyebrows,
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I look at his mouth, I look at the way the animation is.
03:17
If it's like in a really crazy scene
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and the background changes,
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then I know I have to get much bigger.
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So now that we've done one take of this long pass
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my director's gonna give me some notes.
03:26
And she'll have a lot of 'em.
03:27
Let's give that another pass.
03:29
The line that you're, I know it's a long set
03:32
for you to sorta take on there,
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is gonna be, sorry, as soon as you
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turn around and go on that.
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So when you ramp yourself up after Pikachu
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get up a little bit, you can even get in
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a little bit more with that.
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So that you're sort of like pretty intense
03:43
by the time you actually step on Litten's tail.
03:45
So the sorry is onscreen?
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The sorry is onscreen.
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The turnaround-- it's that.
03:50
The turnaround, that's sorry?
03:52
That turnaround right there that
03:53
you're seeing, that's you having
03:55
the reaction into the sorry.
03:57
So while this happens our engineer
03:58
moves the three beeps over to the spot
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where I need to punch in the uh, sorry.
04:04
Cool, so we're looking at line 50.
04:07
You got an open shock react and then a sorry.
04:09
So you're gonna do the turn and then the double flap.
04:26
Sometimes I have to deliver a line in a way
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that doesn't feel natural to me.
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Sometimes I have to go really really slow
04:32
or really really fast.
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Sometimes a line will be really urgent,
04:36
but there's not enough mouth movement
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for me to say something really really fast.
04:40
And that can be a problem.
04:44
Blue water, fluffy white clouds,
04:47
and delicious Pinap juice.
04:52
Yeah, you got that, you can hit that second line.
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I was too early so I messed it up.
04:55
I was too early and I messed up the line,
04:58
it's not fluffy white clouds it's white fluffy clouds.
05:04
So long before the script ever even gets to me
05:07
an adapter has to take the Japanese translation
05:09
and make it make sense in English.
05:11
And make it also fit into the mouth flaps.
05:14
That's how we get this.
05:16
The timing of my performance is really important
05:18
because first of all, you don't wanna hear
05:19
somebody talking when their mouth isn't moving.
05:22
Secondly, and this is the adapter's job,
05:23
he has to make sure that everything
05:26
he gets out of the translation makes sense in English
05:29
and fits into the mouth flap.
05:31
So if a character has a big wide open mouth
05:34
halfway through the sentence, he has to justify that,
05:37
he has to write a script that justifies that.
05:43
Blue water, white fluffy clouds,
05:47
and delicious Pinap juice.
05:54
It's so refreshing.
05:57
Yeah, it's great. Great.
06:00
I play many characters on the show.
06:01
Usually I do them one at a time,
06:03
but for the purposes of this demonstration
06:05
I'm gonna do them together.
06:14
Hope you had fun, Ash.
06:16
Sure did, we went diving with a Sharpedo,
06:19
saw lots of Pokemon I've never seen before, yeah!
06:24
That was great, we're just gonna stretch out
06:25
one of the ones in the middle over there.
06:27
You gave us enough time so that we can do it perfectly.
06:30
So sometimes my performance might be a little bit short
06:33
and they can digitally lengthen it
06:34
so that it fits the mouth flap perfectly.
06:37
Sure did, we went diving with a Sharpedo,
06:40
saw lots of Pokemon I've never seen before, yeah!
06:44
Sure did, we went diving with a Sharpedo,
06:48
saw lots of Pokemon I've never seen before, yeah!
06:52
All right, that looked great.
06:57
That sounds like fun!
06:59
We have Mimey to thank for winning
07:00
the tickets for our vacation.
07:02
Thanks very much, Mimey.
07:06
So sometimes the line in the script
07:07
comes up a little bit short and we have to
07:09
add a few syllables to make it fit the flap.
07:10
So Lisa, what do you think?
07:13
Well let's take a look at what we've got.
07:15
Why don't we add in have Mimey to thank
07:17
for winning the tickets for our Alola vacation.
07:20
And how about, that does sound like fun?
07:22
Rather than that sounds like fun.
07:29
That does sound like fun.
07:31
We have Mimey to thank for winning the tickets
07:33
for our Alola vacation.
07:35
Thanks very much, Mimey.
07:39
All right, let's see the completed scene.
08:05
Blue water, white fluffy clouds,
08:09
and delicious Pinap juice.
08:16
It's so refreshing.
08:20
Hope you had fun, Ash.
08:22
Sure did, we went diving with a Sharpedo,
08:25
saw lots of Pokemon I've never seen before, yeah!
08:29
That does sound like fun!
08:31
We have Mimey to thank for winning the tickets
08:33
for our Alola vacation.
08:35
Thanks very much, Mimey.
08:38
And that's how I dub Pokemon.
08:40
So because the English dub is so widespread
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I'm getting emails from people in India,
08:44
and Bangladesh, and Russia, and Japan, and Brazil,
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thanking me for helping them learn English.
08:49
It's really an important thing that helps bridge cultures.
08:52
In 1931 a French actor's union
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told its membership, you cannot dub
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because it is beneath you
08:58
and it is offensive to the original actor.
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