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Post by tuigirl on Sept 27, 2019 7:45:32 GMT
Yesterday I had a bit of a strange experience. I stayed up late because I had to help the sister of my landlady with a call to her NZ bank, since I had lived in NZ for 10 years and my English was supposedly better. Since leaving NZ, my main contact with the English language was audio, TV series and movies and the occasional visit and skype with friends.
Calling the bank and going through all the pre-selective options before you get an operator was... challenging. I understood everything, but is was pretty fast. I hesitated a couple of times and had to repeat steps because I needed to think. However, as soon as I got the operator, I was full of joy hearing the Kiwi accent again.
Now my question is- for you, do you think the speech we get in the audios is natural? Or do they make a special effort to talk slower and more elaborate and clearly than in daily life?
When I look at my German audios, I can see that they make an effort to have the high German language and hardly and dialects. This is also on TV, however, you also have regional crime and comedy shows which could as well count as foreign language events.
My theory is, maybe, that one does not really notice these things in ones native language and also not so much when talking face to face or on TV/ movie because of the additional visual input. Taken together with actors speaking slower and more clearly- is the speech we hear slightly artificial?
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Post by glutamodo on Sept 27, 2019 8:00:34 GMT
Nice question, and I think it's valid to wonder how well they combine odd accents with speech patterns. However I'm not sure how many general listeners are able to spot this. Also, the actor likely nails down the pattern timing, but that does not mean the sound designer will include the timing/spacing. It's all a group effort, one might say.
Timing is actually a very important thing. I am often used as an instructor at work and I have been many times told I should go and be a voice actor, because I often slip into various voices. I never consider this as an option, because I never went to drama school, and am totally not trained on how to keep in-character. But does this matter when the sound editors just muck everything up? Hmm...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2019 8:01:33 GMT
More than slightly, the language we tend to hear in fiction is actually pretty affected and unnatural. Dialogue has to serve a direct purpose and fit within an allotted runtime, so naturalistic speech with pauses, repetition, ums, ahs and so on, tend to be rare because outside of day-to-day conversation. Mainly, as viewers/listeners tend to tire of it very easily. It can be done, but it's often treated as a stylistic trick -- Quentin Tarantino's dialogue, for instance -- rather than the norm.
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Post by aussiedoctorwhofan on Sept 27, 2019 9:47:35 GMT
More than slightly, the language we tend to hear in fiction is actually pretty affected and unnatural. Dialogue has to serve a direct purpose and fit within an allotted runtime, so naturalistic speech with pauses, repetition, ums, ahs and so on, tend to be rare because outside of day-to-day conversation. Mainly, as viewers/listeners tend to tire of it very easily. It can be done, but it's often treated as a stylistic trick -- Quentin Tarantino's dialogue, for instance -- rather than the norm. Good example, Quentin's style of prose.. wow.. If you don't like it it seemingly goes on forever..  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2019 10:03:03 GMT
More than slightly, the language we tend to hear in fiction is actually pretty affected and unnatural. Dialogue has to serve a direct purpose and fit within an allotted runtime, so naturalistic speech with pauses, repetition, ums, ahs and so on, tend to be rare because outside of day-to-day conversation. Mainly, as viewers/listeners tend to tire of it very easily. It can be done, but it's often treated as a stylistic trick -- Quentin Tarantino's dialogue, for instance -- rather than the norm. Good example, Quentin's style of prose.. wow.. If you don't like it it seemingly goes on forever.. Right? It just sliiiiiiides through the scene and you know that there is a point, but it's almost impossible to tell what it could be. It's the dialogue equivalent of suspense. Another wonderful example -- from The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer -- of naturalistic dialogue is: " You remind me of a man." Everyone in the scene is talking with movie dialogue, except Cary Grant. The contrast between the two produces the hoodoo that's lasted through to Labyrinth and beyond.  |
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Post by tuigirl on Sept 27, 2019 18:32:51 GMT
Good example, Quentin's style of prose.. wow.. If you don't like it it seemingly goes on forever.. Right? It just sliiiiiiides through the scene and you know that there is a point, but it's almost impossible to tell what it could be. It's the dialogue equivalent of suspense. Another wonderful example -- from The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer -- of naturalistic dialogue is: " You remind me of a man." Everyone in the scene is talking with movie dialogue, except Cary Grant. The contrast between the two produces the hoodoo that's lasted through to Labyrinth and beyond. Oh wow! That example was exactly what I was looking for.
Yes, this makes a lot of sense what you say.
As I had suspected, much of what we hear in our audios and see on TV seems indeed to be a bit unnatural....
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Post by polly on Sept 27, 2019 19:13:05 GMT
Yeah, almost any sort of acted dialogue will have some kind of affectation. It's sometimes a stylistic or character choice, but most of the time it's for clarity. But I will say that in general, Big Finish is no more or less natural sounding than any other performed media I've encountered.
The only time it's jumped out at me as feeling off is the rare occasions when BF has steered an American actor in front of a microphone and that actor sounds deer-in-the-headlights. Why this happens to Americans specifically, I don't know. Maybe because radio drama is all but dead this side of the pond.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2019 14:28:27 GMT
Well am Glaswegian and i gather we are difficult to understand.
I go on holiday to my friends in Malta i start speaking and am met with strange looks ,so i slow my speech down and become more pronounced.
then i return home and am told What the hell are you speaking like?
I had A German friend (RIP Bernd) when we met he said My God i go to university and study English, I come to Glasgow and i understand No One and i was told you speak English.what English?
there is a BBC audio English defintely lol
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ljwilson
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It's tangerine....not orange
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Post by ljwilson on Sept 28, 2019 15:45:14 GMT
Yeah, almost any sort of acted dialogue will have some kind of affectation. It's sometimes a stylistic or character choice, but most of the time it's for clarity. But I will say that in general, Big Finish is no more or less natural sounding than any other performed media I've encountered. The only time it's jumped out at me as feeling off is the rare occasions when BF has steered an American actor in front of a microphone and that actor sounds deer-in-the-headlights. Why this happens to Americans specifically, I don't know. Maybe because radio drama is all but dead this side of the pond. Deer in the headlights is how I found 'Operation Victor' from the Dark Shadows range, so stilted and so very unnatural. One actor says their lines, then it was the other actors turn...repeat for one hour. No interruptions or natural speech patterns whatsoever. An example of how BF do natural very successfully is when Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant get going..it just flows. It is a bit of a generalisation, but the stilted approach is mainly from American actors and much of it in the Dark Shadows range. |
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Post by Hieronymus on Sept 28, 2019 16:36:23 GMT
Deer in the headlights is how I found 'Operation Victor' from the Dark Shadows range, so stilted and so very unnatural. One actor says their lines, then it was the other actors turn...repeat for one hour. No interruptions or natural speech patterns whatsoever. It is a bit of a generalisation, but the stilted approach is mainly from American actors and much of it in the Dark Shadows range. I wonder if that is deliberate? It's largely the style that the Dark Shadows TV show had, and is an older style of (American) acting, where the actors take turns speaking. |
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Post by fingersmash on Sept 28, 2019 16:43:09 GMT
Yesterday I had a bit of a strange experience. I stayed up late because I had to help the sister of my landlady with a call to her NZ bank, since I had lived in NZ for 10 years and my English was supposedly better. Since leaving NZ, my main contact with the English language was audio, TV series and movies and the occasional visit and skype with friends.
Calling the bank and going through all the pre-selective options before you get an operator was... challenging. I understood everything, but is was pretty fast. I hesitated a couple of times and had to repeat steps because I needed to think. However, as soon as I got the operator, I was full of joy hearing the Kiwi accent again.
Now my question is- for you, do you think the speech we get in the audios is natural? Or do they make a special effort to talk slower and more elaborate and clearly than in daily life?
When I look at my German audios, I can see that they make an effort to have the high German language and hardly and dialects. This is also on TV, however, you also have regional crime and comedy shows which could as well count as foreign language events.
My theory is, maybe, that one does not really notice these things in ones native language and also not so much when talking face to face or on TV/ movie because of the additional visual input. Taken together with actors speaking slower and more clearly- is the speech we hear slightly artificial?
The speech we hear is most certainly artificial. The quirk of any performed work is that no one ever actually speaks like the characters do. You don't get filler words like ums and ahs, you don't get a ton of times where someone pauses for thought, and you don't get the train of thought style of speaking of speed up-slow down that so many people do. It's just really odd where you notice it and you can't stop noticing it. |
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Post by anothermanicmondas on Sept 28, 2019 20:47:09 GMT
Well am Glaswegian and i gather we are difficult to understand. I go on holiday to my friends in Malta i start speaking and am met with strange looks ,so i slow my speech down and become more pronounced. then i return home and am told What the hell are you speaking like? I had A German friend (RIP Bernd) when we met he said My God i go to university and study English, I come to Glasgow and i understand No One and i was told you speak English.what English? there is a BBC audio English defintely lol I will comment that I felt in the 2000 AD Strontium Dog stories Middenface's accent was toned down a lot compared to the comics
I wonder what the reaction would be if they had been truer to the character and not worried about whether people could understand him
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ljwilson
Chancellery Guard
It's tangerine....not orange
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Post by ljwilson on Sept 29, 2019 10:37:26 GMT
Deer in the headlights is how I found 'Operation Victor' from the Dark Shadows range, so stilted and so very unnatural. One actor says their lines, then it was the other actors turn...repeat for one hour. No interruptions or natural speech patterns whatsoever. It is a bit of a generalisation, but the stilted approach is mainly from American actors and much of it in the Dark Shadows range. I wonder if that is deliberate? It's largely the style that the Dark Shadows TV show had, and is an older style of (American) acting, where the actors take turns speaking. I have thought it may be deliberate, to give a feel and style of the 70's etc. |
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