Everyone can do an American accent... at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC's Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry's top accent coaches.
Any actor or actress hoping to convince in a foreign accent must have three words in the back of their mind at all times.
They won't be phrases like "shape of mouth", "position of tongue" or "placement of voice" - although all of these will be fundamental to learning and adopting an accent.
The three words haunting the performer, driving hour after hour of dialect practice, are "Dick", "Van" and "Dyke".
Everyone can do an American accent... at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC's Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry's top accent coaches.
Any actor or actress hoping to convince in a foreign accent must have three words in the back of their mind at all times.
They won't be phrases like "shape of mouth", "position of tongue" or "placement of voice" - although all of these will be fundamental to learning and adopting an accent.
The three words haunting the performer, driving hour after hour of dialect practice, are "Dick", "Van" and "Dyke".
The American's "strike a light, guv'nor" Cockney caricature in Mary Poppins is widely regarded as delivering the worst film accent of all time. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it was not.
And that's up against competition from Sean Connery playing a Spaniard, an Irishman and a Russian at stages of his career.
British dialect coach Barbara Berkery admits that a lot of actors seeking her tutelage plead at the outset: "I don't want to sound like Dick Van Dyke."
Her glittering cast of former students include Gwyneth Paltrow, whom she trained for Emma and Shakespeare in Love, and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones's Diary and Miss Potter.
Half-hour challenge
Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love and Zellweger was nominated as Bridget Jones, but probably the greater tributes to their English accents were the nominations from an obviously impressed British Academy - they sounded the part.
Berkery has also coached Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet), Jim Carrey (A Christmas Carol, due out next year) and Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean), and is currently working with Jake Gyllenhaal on his English accent for Prince of Persia.
The American's "strike a light, guv'nor" Cockney caricature in Mary Poppins is widely regarded as delivering the worst film accent of all time. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it was not.
And that's up against competition from Sean Connery playing a Spaniard, an Irishman and a Russian at stages of his career.
British dialect coach Barbara Berkery admits that a lot of actors seeking her tutelage plead at the outset: "I don't want to sound like Dick Van Dyke."
Her glittering cast of former students include Gwyneth Paltrow, whom she trained for Emma and Shakespeare in Love, and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones's Diary and Miss Potter.
Half-hour challenge
Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love and Zellweger was nominated as Bridget Jones, but probably the greater tributes to their English accents were the nominations from an obviously impressed British Academy - they sounded the part.
Berkery has also coached Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet), Jim Carrey (A Christmas Carol, due out next year) and Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean), and is currently working with Jake Gyllenhaal on his English accent for Prince of Persia.
In other words, or for words in another accent anyway, London-based Berkery has become the English dialect coach Hollywood turns to. "It's a nice position to be in," she says.
Usually conducting her training for several weeks in the run-up to a production, and then throughout the shoot, Berkery has consistently achieved convincing results with hugely-dedicated and highly-talented actors; what she can do with me in half an hour is a different challenge altogether.
Exposure to US films and television means most people probably believe they can affect a passable American accent - myself included.
But Berkery explains that "mimicry is not the same as doing accents - if somebody is just mimicking, I think we do feel it isn't quite truthful."
Her work involves building the accent authentically by teaching the real mouth shapes and tongue positions involved - for a general American accent, she tells me, that means a wide mouth and the tongue higher up in the mouth.
She also tells me to smile, in order to place the voice towards my nasal resonator - one of the three voice resonators along with the facial and throat resonators. Berkery describes learning to do an accent as having "a mask on the face that fits perfectly".
With my lifted tongue, wide mouth, attempted smile, and the concentration involved in maintaining these as we start voice exercises, my mask resembles something like Jack Nicholson's The Joker with a lobotomised, vacant look in the eyes. I feel certain that a cinema audience would find it distracting.
Berkery takes me through some of the major vowel changes from standard English to general American - their short "ah" in bath and sample, the "aw" in cloth and Boston - and the sound that comes out of my mouth is unrecognisable to me.
It is a long way from my own south-east England accent, but not much nearer my trusted American impression. It does sound vaguely American, but like an over-the-top, slightly camp game show host with an occasional lisp - not what I had been aiming for at all.
And I find the process very unnerving. "The voice is the soul and you are moving it," says Berkery.
"People do find it very frightening - it's like being off-balance."
As we continue, moving from vowel exercises to working on consonant changes, Berkery frequently offers comments like "Make it less" and "Don't do as much".
Not only is my performance dreadful, there is clearly much too much of it; my overacting makes Dick Van Dyke's infamous turn look like a masterclass of subtlety and technique.
"You mustn't play an accent," Berkery says. "You must play a character who has an accent, but you must never play an accent."
Berkery and her students start with nothing and build an accent from its essential parts.My brief lesson hints at the phenomenal amount of work involved in reaching a point where that accent convinces on a giant screen, in surround sound and over a two-hour running time.
While Berkery suggests most actors "can have a good stab at the accent if you have enough time", she stresses that those that "get it really perfect" do so through exceptional dedication.
She had two months working with Zellweger before filming started on Bridget Jones's Diary, comprising lessons in the morning followed by afternoons out together in London when the actress was forced to keep up her accent.
Zellweger later worked undercover in a publishing house using her English accent, and also maintained it on set for the entirety of the film's shoot.
"Some people never, ever heard her own accent until we finished the film," says Berkery.
"It was a testament to her talent and hard work. It was a complete transformation; she is a girl with a very strong Texan accent and she did completely transform herself."
An authentic accent will be "second-nature" to an actor, Berkery says, likening it to fluency in a foreign language where a person doesn't have to think about the process of speaking.
"You don't want the audience to notice," she adds. "You don't really want people to think, 'That's a good accent,' because if you think that you are not thinking about the character."
On those terms, maybe my accent wasn't such a flop after all - nobody's ever going to be distracted thinking how good it was.
Showing posts with label foreign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foreign. Show all posts
Monday, 28 July 2008
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
China to set up Olympic protest zones
BEIJING, China (AP) -- Beijing will set up specially designated zones for protesters during next month's Olympics, a security official said Wednesday, in a sign China's authoritarian government may allow some demonstrations during the games.
Worries about terrorist attacks, both from international groups and Muslim separatists from western China, and about protests of any kind have prompted one of China's broadest security clampdowns in years. The overall effect is that while Beijing looks cheerful, with colorful Olympic banners and new signs, the city feels tense.
Vehicle checkpoints ring Beijing. Visa rules have been tightened to keep out foreign activists. Police have swept Beijing neighborhoods to remove Chinese who have come to the capital to complain about local government misdeeds, and known political critics and underground Christians have been told to leave.
But Liu Shaowu, director for security for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, said Wednesday that areas in at least three public parks near outlying sporting venues have been set aside for use by demonstrators.
The remarks were the first public confirmation that Beijing may tolerate a modest amount of protest at an Olympics that the government hoped would be flawless, boosting its popularity at home and China's image abroad.
"This will allow people to protest without disrupting the Olympics," said Ni Jianping, director of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies, who lobbied Chinese leaders to set up the protest zones.
It was not clear how easy access would be to enter the zones. Liu and Beijing police would not say if special permission would be needed. A human rights campaigner criticized the move as cosmetic, and Beijing has already refused visa requests for known foreign activists.
A Beijinger whose restaurant was demolished in the city's Olympic makeover and who was jailed for trying to organize a protest, Ye Guoqiang, was taken from the Chaobai Prison on Tuesday to an unknown location, four days before he was due to be released, the monitoring group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Wednesday. Police in Ye's old neighborhood said they were not aware of the case.
Liu, the security official, said police were trying to strike a balance between the need for safety and the desire for festiveness.
"We truly do want to preserve the festive and joyful atmosphere of the Olympic Venues," Liu told a news conference. "At the same time we want to reduce the impact security has on daily life."
He said threats from terrorism were real, given the international climate, and that the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected in Beijing presented a ripe opportunity for infiltration.
In approving the protest zones, Liu said officials noted that Athens set up such areas for the 2004 games. The Salt Lake City Winter Games of 2002 did too. "We have already designated specific areas where people or protesters who want to express their personal opinions can go to do so," Liu said.
Protests have become commonplace in many parts of China in recent years, especially by state industry workers upset about layoffs and farmers angry about land confiscation. But China's leadership remains wary about demonstrations in the capital or large-scale protests anywhere, fearing they could snowball into widespread anti-government movements. Three violent protests have occurred in far-flung provinces in recent weeks.
In a sign of Chinese nervousness, the special protest areas are not near the Olympic green where most venues and medal ceremonies are concentrated, but rather are in outlying parks: the World Park in the southwest, 3 miles from the softball venue; the Purple Bamboo Park in the west, south of the volleyball arena; and Chaoyang Park in the east where beach volleyball will be played.
Liu also reiterated that Chinese regulations require that all protesters apply and receive permission in advance, though he sidestepped questions about whether that included the special zones. Ni, the Shanghai scholar, said that Chinese protesters may be allowed only in the rather far World Park, not in the other venues.
"Designating unilaterally 'protest zones' for demonstrators does not equate to respecting the right to demonstrate because in this situation control comes first and the right second," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.
Still, supporters of the zones said the move was a step forward. Susan Brownell, an American academic at Beijing Sports University who wrote a proposal that Ni forwarded to government officials, said her research found that the zones would help deflect criticism from all but the more extreme rights groups -- an argument she thought the government bought.
"It was about placating the West. They were really concerned about social order," Brownell said. "They must have come up with a plan to improve social order rather than make it worse."
Worries about terrorist attacks, both from international groups and Muslim separatists from western China, and about protests of any kind have prompted one of China's broadest security clampdowns in years. The overall effect is that while Beijing looks cheerful, with colorful Olympic banners and new signs, the city feels tense.
Vehicle checkpoints ring Beijing. Visa rules have been tightened to keep out foreign activists. Police have swept Beijing neighborhoods to remove Chinese who have come to the capital to complain about local government misdeeds, and known political critics and underground Christians have been told to leave.
But Liu Shaowu, director for security for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, said Wednesday that areas in at least three public parks near outlying sporting venues have been set aside for use by demonstrators.
The remarks were the first public confirmation that Beijing may tolerate a modest amount of protest at an Olympics that the government hoped would be flawless, boosting its popularity at home and China's image abroad.
"This will allow people to protest without disrupting the Olympics," said Ni Jianping, director of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies, who lobbied Chinese leaders to set up the protest zones.
It was not clear how easy access would be to enter the zones. Liu and Beijing police would not say if special permission would be needed. A human rights campaigner criticized the move as cosmetic, and Beijing has already refused visa requests for known foreign activists.
A Beijinger whose restaurant was demolished in the city's Olympic makeover and who was jailed for trying to organize a protest, Ye Guoqiang, was taken from the Chaobai Prison on Tuesday to an unknown location, four days before he was due to be released, the monitoring group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Wednesday. Police in Ye's old neighborhood said they were not aware of the case.
Liu, the security official, said police were trying to strike a balance between the need for safety and the desire for festiveness.
"We truly do want to preserve the festive and joyful atmosphere of the Olympic Venues," Liu told a news conference. "At the same time we want to reduce the impact security has on daily life."
He said threats from terrorism were real, given the international climate, and that the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected in Beijing presented a ripe opportunity for infiltration.
In approving the protest zones, Liu said officials noted that Athens set up such areas for the 2004 games. The Salt Lake City Winter Games of 2002 did too. "We have already designated specific areas where people or protesters who want to express their personal opinions can go to do so," Liu said.
Protests have become commonplace in many parts of China in recent years, especially by state industry workers upset about layoffs and farmers angry about land confiscation. But China's leadership remains wary about demonstrations in the capital or large-scale protests anywhere, fearing they could snowball into widespread anti-government movements. Three violent protests have occurred in far-flung provinces in recent weeks.
In a sign of Chinese nervousness, the special protest areas are not near the Olympic green where most venues and medal ceremonies are concentrated, but rather are in outlying parks: the World Park in the southwest, 3 miles from the softball venue; the Purple Bamboo Park in the west, south of the volleyball arena; and Chaoyang Park in the east where beach volleyball will be played.
Liu also reiterated that Chinese regulations require that all protesters apply and receive permission in advance, though he sidestepped questions about whether that included the special zones. Ni, the Shanghai scholar, said that Chinese protesters may be allowed only in the rather far World Park, not in the other venues.
"Designating unilaterally 'protest zones' for demonstrators does not equate to respecting the right to demonstrate because in this situation control comes first and the right second," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.
Still, supporters of the zones said the move was a step forward. Susan Brownell, an American academic at Beijing Sports University who wrote a proposal that Ni forwarded to government officials, said her research found that the zones would help deflect criticism from all but the more extreme rights groups -- an argument she thought the government bought.
"It was about placating the West. They were really concerned about social order," Brownell said. "They must have come up with a plan to improve social order rather than make it worse."
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