We don't we just do it.

We just go in and we do it.

That's hard.

Hi, I'm Sarah Nada Cheney.

I'm an actor and I'm the voice of Ash Ketchum on Pokemon, as well as the voices of New and Whose area and Miss Magus.

As a voice actor, I spent a lot of my career dubbing, which is the process of taking a foreign language piece of content, film or TV show and reinterpreting it in English like this.

I hope you have fun, Ash.

Sure did.

We went diving with a Sharpie?

No.

So lots of Pokemon I've never seen before.

Yeah, but dubbing is not as easy as it may look.

So today I'm gonna be breaking down the techniques I've used to help me master my craft.

There are two main types of foreign language dubbing, animation, dubbing and live action dubbing.

Animation.

Dubbing gives actors a lot more freedom because the animated faces aren't quite as nuanced as human faces.

So actors get to convey all that nuance through their vocal performances while staying true.

to the animation animation Doubling is being done all over the world because Children aren't reading subtitles.

So The Lion King that we grew up with in America isn't the same lion King they grew up with in Germany.

They grew up with a German Lanqing, and it is spectacular.

Live action dubbing is much harder to dio.

A great live action dubbing actor fully embodies and imitates the actor on screen.

To make it a believable dub, You have to capture every little eye roll every every flourish, every tiny little nuance that a human being can make and is making on that screen.

You have to imitate it regardless of what type of dubbing you're interested in.

Here's some techniques that have helped me get to where I am today.

Learn to imitate performances on the fly without having to watch it too much.

All actors except dubbing actors, have the luxury of rehearsing before they go in and record or shoot something.

We don't we just do it.

We just go in and we do it.

It's hard when you're imitating a performance.

You have to look for absolutely everything that actor is doing.

If they're turning and kind of like looking over their shoulder, they might strain a little bit.

So you got to capture that strain.

If they're kind of like doing that, you have to capture that.

If they're whispering, you have to be very attuned to the volume of their voice and the power behind what's coming out.

For example, check out this film clip.

You didn't know David was going to kill you.

You didn't know how I pleaded with him.

How I beg for your life.

I didn't know how I convinced him that sending you to prison would serve Justus.

Well, you thought I was against you if I called red.

So as you can see in the clip at the end there she has a really interesting emotional shift where she seems almost kind of sneaky.

And she takes a few little breaths that you have to match.

You thought I was against you.

An actor could make the mistake of making this too dramatic.

So the key to a good dub on this is matching her energy.

Let's watch how I dub it into Russian thing is not that David Fabulosity Bell Beach thing is now Cabo Malala was by see if I was using Thing is now cocky Vukovar evolution, but that is you have to remove will build a static.

Now the most approaches Cuba by imitating the actor on screen rather than just saying the line.

Whichever way I want to say it, I'm producing a much more believable dub, and that's the goal.

So take a little piece of a movie or TV show, take one line and start imitating it.

Play it, imitated, play it imitated, get every little breath, every little nuance.

And if you could do that, you're on your way to being a good Deborah.

Another thing I recommend is performing material that requires a lot of movement without moving too much.

You're in a small booth with a microphone, so even if your character is running or falling into an abyss or making love, these are all things that you have to feel in your body without moving your feet.

At the very least, you can't be running around if your character is running around.

Not only is it impossible to stay on Mike, if you're doing that, you're also going to be making noise with your feet so your feet have to be planted on the ground while you're also running it.

Z takes some practice.

The worst thing you can do is dub over a character that's being really active and sound like you're sitting down in a four by five booth.

That's a bad job.

So to get into an active scene say, my character is running, I'll start running before I even do anything.

I'll actually take my feet off the ground before we do the take and I'll start running in place and I'll get a little bit out of breath because I don't actually work out that much and then beep, beep, beep.

And then I plant my feet and I'm already kind of out of breath and I start talking as if I just ran into something or as if I'm still running.

And that's kind of that's kind of how you do it falling into a pit.

You can't really prepare for that because the character doesn't know what's gonna happen.

So you guys are the mic right?

And I'm like, I'm I'm walking over the edge.

Whoa, You guys say I'm like but feel and I feel it kind of in my torso.

I feel like off balance, but I'm not.

I'm not falling over.

Obviously, you don't want to fall over in the booth.

It's weird, so I'm doing as much of the action as I can while also making sure that the audio isn't affected.

Here's a cool tip.

Just watch great dubs.

You'll be able to see how the actor is connecting to the original actor and what they're doing to make everything feel seamless and natural.

Here's some of my favorite dubs, uh, animation wise Ernest and Celestine was nominated for an Oscar.

Absolutely beautiful funny film.

I highly recommend it.

Mirai is an animal that was also nominated for an Oscar.

MFK Z is sick.

Just watch it.

My three live action recommendations are Money Heist Dark and the Rain There Really good.

Netflix has reported that up to 85% of viewers are watching dubs over subs, and one thing you should know about subtitles.

Um, they're not that authentic.

A lot of people say this and a lot of people are going to yell at me in the comments, But hang on a second.

Just stay with me for a minute.

Subtitles are truncated.

Subtitles have to fit on the screen and subtitles take you away from the picture above.

They make you keep reading, so your eyes are constantly shifting, so you're not picking up everything there is to pick up.

That's why dubs are preferred and their preferred all over the world.

There are actually laws in France that prohibits the import of foreign films without dubbing them into French and other countries, which have been dubbing for a long time.

They're dubbing, actors are very famous, and they have dubbing awards.

A certain dubbing actor will actually be the voice of a non camera actor throughout that actor's career.

So the actors who play Robert DeNiro in their local languages play Robert DeNiro through his entire career.

It's new in America because we export a lot more than we import, but now, with the new streaming services, we're importing a lot of foreign content.

That's very exciting.

Now that we're importing, we have to be certain not to make a dub to doubIe.

If a dub is doubIe, that means that there is jarring diction and awkward phrasing and translation and just bad sink, so it's hard to produce a great dub.

But when they're done well, that's the best way to watch something from a foreign country.

The next piece of advice is super important.

Trust your director.

Dubbing is the only type of acting where you're not directly working with your scene partner in animation and live action and every other form of acting in theater.

You're playing off another actor, and you're free to make those choices in the moment.

And that's where a lot of the magic comes from.

Um, but in dubbing, it's quite a bit more strict.

So that's why you have to trust your director because they know what your partner is going to dio.

They know what the other actors sound like.

You may not even know who the other actors are.

So when you're director tells you to do a certain read, just trust, um equal.

And for my next tip practice, being a wide array of characters, the more characters you could believably dio, the more you're gonna work.

Because every producer wants to hire an actor that can cover four or five characters rather than just one in doubling in an animation.

Playing 30 characters is pretty common I play about 30 characters on Pokemon.

Chancey Chin Chouba near Ybor.

Me, Bedu, Esper, Diggle.

It, uh, Starling Star after story via Rosalia Rose Raid Wing Gle, Uh, many others Binary.

Did I say that one binaries.

My favorite.

How can you practice getting into all these different characters?

Do some impressions, find some great characters, great actors and start doing impressions of them.

Even if you do a bad impression, you might come out of there with a character.

Just discover your range.

Discover your lowest point discover if you could talk like that for a long time, you're really throwing rights and see what's in there.

Use your really nasal voice and see what's in there.

Discover you're comfortable range and discover you're uncomfortable Range.

I have some characters that are kind of in this range, and that's something that I can sustain for a whole season or three seasons of work.

But you think you were here.

You're probably not anyone every long time.

Or maybe I just discovered that I can I don't know if it hurts.

Don't do it.

Don't do it at all.

Even if it's just a tiny little character in a certain thing because you could injure your voice.

And that is gonna hurt your career, possibly forever.

It's also interesting to note how personalities can affect different voices.

I was in production on two shows.

I was playing Twinkle, one of the leads in Super Four and Mary and one of the leads in Robin Hood at the same time.

And these two characters sit in the same place in my range, baby dragging slobber.

Oh no, it's getting worse and worse, they have almost the same voice.

What sets them apart is their personalities and the way they relate to other characters.

So understand that sometimes you're gonna play characters that sound alike.

But it's okay.

Watching shows with captions on watching shows with captions on is very helpful for an actor because you're basically watching the script go by as you're watching the performance at the same time.

And this makes it easier to understand all the choices and actor is making in the moment when you walk into a dubbing studio, you haven't seen the material.

Probably, and you definitely haven't seen the script.

You have to be able to pick up a performance and all the nuance of that performance like that, the more attuned you are to the tone, power and intent behind a performance, the better you will be a dubbing.

And this is also why I actually don't remember the plot points of certain shows because I'm just watching for performance.

I think watching things with captions is a master class in acting.

Here's the biggest tip I can give you for dubbing.

Take acting classes.

You are not getting in the dubbing door unless you're an actor.

You're competing with people who have been acting their entire lives, who are trying to get in the dubbing door.

You're going to need to know how to do an original performance.

Justus.

Well, as you're going to need to know how to imitate one, and that's what acting classes for.

To control your emotion.

To summon emotion.

Thio, understand how you're moving toe, understand the space around you to be hyper aware of your body and your mind.

That's what you're gonna learn an acting class, and that is what is absolutely imperative to dubbing.

Also, a lot of people who are taking acting classes are gonna want to rush right into producing a demo and getting jobs and getting in there.

Um, be careful.

Don't rush your demo.

Don't go without any practice or without any education, rushed to a demo producer and say, Let's make it and start sending it out to studios because it is very specialized.

And if you make a demo, that's not that great.

It's gonna take a while for studios to look atyou again, like years.

Here's my last piece of advice.

Be grateful and know your rates.

Know your worth, know the worth of the job that you're doing.

Ah, lot of new actors don't realize they're worth and the value that they're adding to the projects that they're doing.

Let me give you an analogy.

I make you a sandwich, you eat the sandwich.

You don't really think about the sandwich ever again.

I make you a TV show.

You're watching it every single week.

You're showing it to your family, to your kids.

Your dressing up on Halloween is these characters.

The work that you're doing will outlive you, and the influence that you have will outlive you.

You're not doing that with a sandwich.

So that is why I'm saying this Know your worth.

It is your job to understand the scope and usage of your work before you start doing the job.

And if there is any hint if that if that studio has projects that have gone to two big networks or two big streaming platforms, that's your hint to say, Hang on a second.