You, as an actor working in a foreign language, need to work even harder to deliver the performance that will bring you international attention; that will bring you closer to being able to choose your career’s direction with the roles that you want. We, as dialog coaches, can take some of that workload off you… There are many aspects to dialog coaching to help you to make the part come alive as your own.

We will help you internalize your lines, giving you the flexibility to make the part come alive, and also the ability to adapt to any last-minute script changes. So, you tell us how you, your character or director wants to say it, and we help you to say it right. If you are not sure of how to say it, we can give you several variations on a theme.

Background research:

1. We will research the director’s, producer’s and writer’s previous work. This includes: recurring themes; subtitles so you can really understand what they are trying to say; their directorial idioms and signatures.
2. We will research the dialect and idioms of the target character’s social circle, by reading related stories, watching documentaries and similarly themed movies.
3. We will research any cultural points, which may be difficult to understand but will benefit the actor: especially cynicism, black humor, double meanings etc., but also historical or philosophical references.

Accent reduction:

We have teachers trained to a patented proven method modified to suit standard American and British English, which matched with our knowledge of phonetics, can be easily used to fit any regional dialect of English, and also the Japanese language for foreigners. This method was patented in Los Angeles, the home of the international movie industry. It has been used by OS staff over many years on numerous successful projects. We start by diagnosing the actor’s phonetic problems and modeling a specific treatment program. The English language has 32 vowel sounds, but to prevent the actor from getting confused and having to concentrate too much on his pronunciation, which would sacrifice his performance, we have broken all of the vowel and consonant sounds down into simple to remember basic tongue positions and mouth positions. This method frees the actor from pronunciation worries by concentrating on the physical positions of pronunciation, and separating the action of each sound into those basic mouth and tongue positions; using a mirror, self-recordings and even a dentists’ model!

As all the staff have considerable experience of teaching Japanese people, we pay specific attention to Japanese speakers’ problems: weak final consonants; lack of schwa; differentiation between ‘r’/‘l’, ‘b’/‘v’, ‘shi’/‘si’, ‘too’/‘tsu’ and ‘th’; and hanging vowel sounds at the end of words, etc.

Dialect coaching:

We also have English-speakers from many different backgrounds, trained to pick up differences in accents and teach them, and the same in French, or other common European languages.

Intonation training:

Japanese people are taught English by reading, heads down, from a textbook. We can teach you to speak with a natural intonation so that you don’t sound like a tongue-tied school-kid! We do this with a series of traditional stage-acting exercises, as well as breathing exercises as used by classically trained singers. English intonation being a particular problem for Japanese people we will take you through different intonations for different meanings.

For non-native actors needing Japanese:

If your character needs to speak some Japanese, in many cases there is no need for perfect diction, but there is a need to make the Japanese dialog understandable for the Japanese market in the absence of subtitles, and more importantly, to match the supposed Japanese level of the character’s history.

As everyone in the movie industry is aware, there is an ever-increasing interest in having some Japanese connection in the movies. It would be easy enough to write a Top Ten of unintelligible or excruciating ‘Japanese’ from western actors in the movies. Unfortunately it’s not just limited to the ‘You Only Live Twice’ era: there are many examples from the last couple of years...

For example, when a character is a westerner who only has a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese, that is how they should sound, but often there is a discrepancy between the character’s supposed level and the actor’s natural ability - especially when non-Japanese Asians are employed to play Japanese characters. We would like to eliminate that problem for you!!

The OS method, although designed for learning English phonetics, has been perfectly adapted for helping the actor handle Japanese pronunciation and intonation too to the level that the script requires.

Process for dialog coaching process

1. Advanced viewing of the script: A draft of the script and any material regarding the project is sent for immediate assessment.
2. Meeting / Schedule: A meeting is held for the actor to meet the dialog coach and discuss a training schedule.
3. Script analysis: When training begins, the script is broken down in scenes and discussed thoroughly.
4. Level Assessment: The actor is asked to read through each scene, while the dialog coach takes notes and checks for weak areas in phonology, intonation or understanding of content.
5. Pre-Recording: A voice actor is used to record the dialogs for the actor to practice outside of the lesson. This is mainly to focus on pronunciation.
6. Lesson / Training: The script is read through and taught with precise explanation of the differences in sounds and intonation.
7. Recording: A voice actor is used to record the final dialogs for the actor to use before or during the filming.
8. Training: During the filming schedule, the actor will be able to decide the schedule for continued training for upcoming scenes.
9. Film & TV set / stage support: The dialog coach accompanies the actor during the filming of their scenes, to assist them whenever necessary.

Dialog coaching for other fields

Our staff includes a number of coaches with performance experience, as well as with speech-preparation, and academic, scientific and business presentations. While, of course, the content is very different, a lot of the technical skills required for these activities are similar to those in professional acting: whether it is intonation, breathing techniques, projection, accent reduction, or relaxation to deal with pre-stage jitters. We have prepared speeches and presentations, and coached the presenters, for international scientific conferences, international summits and lawmakers’ round-tables, speech-contests, and have coached a variety of musicians for their foreign-language performances.

In addition to actors our expertise and dialog coaching method is essential for radio presenters, narrators, announcers, MCs, researchers, business people, and media professionals of all kinds. Even directors, casting agents, producers, singers and production managers can benefit from just the basic accent reduction training. People in all of these areas need to concentrate on breathing, intonation, projection, pacing, linking, body language, rhythm and relaxation in delivery.