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| Brad Pitt |
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| Nicole Kidman |
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| Matt Damon |
What do Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman and Matt Damon have in common?
(a)Extremely successful movie stars.
(b)On the Hollywood the A-list.
(c)All have learned language accents to do famous movies.
(d)Tim Monich.
Answer – All of the Above
(a) and (b)
Of course both are obviously correct.
(c)
Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman and Matt Damon have all been quite successful at portraying characters using accents that they did not grow up with. Here are some famous examples:
Brad Pitt – Southern Accent - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Nicole Kidman – American Accent - Hemingway & Gellhorn
Matt Damon - South African Accent – Invictus
(d)
Tim Monich
At one point or another, Mr. Tim Monich has coached Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman and Matt Damon on creating believable accents for character portrayals in movies.
So, what can we learn from this linguistic master?
Tim Monich’s Style
Monich’s archive, assembled over thirty years, is almost surely the largest private one of its kind, with approximately six thousand entries. He also collects accents from TV. Monich begins by talking with the director about how a character should sound, then he talks to the actor about the character and decides which voices from his archive might provide a model. He usually gives an actor four or five choices, and the actor selects one, from which Monich makes tapes distilling the vowel and consonant sounds that typify the dialect. Monich and the actor then “play a word, listen to it and say it,” he said—do language lab. Monich invents rhymes and sentences using words from the script—what he calls random acting. He also writes an actor’s lines in a faux-phonetic style he made up by combining elements of actual phonetics with approximations of sounds.
By the time the actor stands in front of the camera, Monich has done the bulk of his teaching work. Eventually, the accent recedes as a concern.
~The New Yorker~
Well this week I have no comments only applause for the A-List Masters.
Thank you for caring and sharing!
And may your star always shine brightly!
Have a good one!
See you next week,
Alex
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