Film dubbing

[Hugh Olmsted]

Colleagues--

About film dubbing in Russia.
Many Russian интеллигенты (intelligenty) are fed up with  
the near-universal practice there of dubbing; they try hard to get  
foreign films with subtitles (титры) so they can hear the  
original language, voices, accents, the whole original integral  
oeuvre d'art.  But it's not easy.
And I when resident in Russia, spoiled by my foreign background,  
certainly have no patience for this universal dubbing (one of whose  
manifestations is retention of the original sound track in the  
background, creating a serious sort of interference).  When I ask  
Russians for interpretation and explanation of the practice, I'm  
frequently told that it's driven by the demands and momentum of the  
dubbing profession, whose members need work.  I don't know whether  
that's a serious explanation...
I wonder whether any one has insight or experience about the  
mechanisms at work in this issue, and/or possible movements for  
change in the direction of titry.
Thanks for any contributions.
Hugh Olmsted


On Oct 19, 2009, at 1:23 PM, Richard Robin wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
>
> I am happy to see responses on Russian dubbing. My own contribution  
> is this:
>
> In 2006, I was invited to watch a cartoon dubbing session at  
> Nevafilm at
> their Vasilievsky Ostrov studios. Nevafilm mostly dubs cartoons,  
> including
> some major movie house releases as less noble Cartoon Channel fare.
>
> The firm employs local actors who specialize in voice work. Of course,
> dubbing cartoons into a foreign language reverses the normal animation
> process in which the voices are recorded first and the actual  
> animation is
> then fitted to the recorded voices. Here the actor (doing all the  
> voices)
> looked at the screen and tried to match his voice to the cartoon’s  
> original
> sync dub.
>
> I was surprised that the dubbing director really ran roughshod over  
> the poor
> actor. (e.g. Опять опаздываешь! Неужели  
> нельзя внимательнее?) The
> опоздание might
> have been plus-minus a fifth of a second. The director insisted on  
> take
> after take after take. During a break I asked the script editor why  
> the
> director insisted on so many takes. After all, on takes that were  
> so close,
> any discernible lip flap could be fixed in post production — much  
> more
> quickly than the time it took to do 10 takes. The script editor’s  
> answer: “У
> нее подход традиционный”.
>
> This episode reinforced my original impression that dubbing in  
> Russia is
> very much an old school skill which commands respect but which  
> places great
> demands on the dubbers.
>
> -Rich Robin
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Prof Steven P Hill
> <s-hill4 at illinois.edu>wrote:
>
>> Dear colleagues, Kayiatos, Robin:
>>
>> Just occurs to me that Detfil'm's occasional actress Galina  
>> Vodianitskaia
>> (Vodyanitskaya, 1918- ) in her years at that studio may have  
>> specialized
>> as a voice actress i.e., may have specialized in dubbing.  I once
>> interviewed
>> the famous Detfil'm director Il'ia Frez, who'd begun at Detfil'm  
>> as an
>> assistant, including on the famous WW2 film "Zoia" ("Zoya"), in  
>> which young
>> Vodianitskaia starred.  Mr Frez may have mentioned about  
>> Vodianitskaia's
>> frequent work
>> in dubbing.  (She was seen ON screen very few times.) -- Steven P  
>> Hill,
>> U. of Illinois.
>> _____________________________________________________________________ 
>> ___
>>
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>
>
>
> -- 
> Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
> Director Russian Language Program
> The George Washington University
> Washington, DC 20052
> 202-994-7081
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Russkiy tekst v UTF-8
>
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