Accent Expert Breaks Down 17 Actors Playing Real People | WIRED

to make an impression darling hi my name is Eric singer and I'm back Eric is still spending his days being a dialect coach for film and television let's talk about some more video Lex what's an idio lect an idiot is one individual person's way of speaking so let's look at some more actors playing real people rami malek Freddie Mercury we're for misfits who don't belong together playing to the other misfits the outcasts right at the back of the room we're pretty sure they don't belong either we belong to them well this is amazing as performance deserves every plaudit that it got thank you let's talk about a couple specific speech things first of all I don't think I've ever talked in one of these videos about prosthetics but of course prosthetics are incredibly common especially when actors are playing real people got to make an impression darling you look like an angry lizard can change the look and shape of the face with prosthetics and of course that's going to affect the way the actor speaks well duh Columbo in this case it's hard to imagine playing Freddie Mercury without those teeth yes of course of course it takes time to get used to something like having prosthetics in your mouth something interesting about the way he does adapt to this there's that very immobilize a mallet I'm going to be what I was born to be a performer let's talk about one more little detail which is Freddie Mercury's s sound an S sound is a sibilant sound Mercury's s is a hyper sibilant sound which means it's higher pitched it would want to be entertained in various ways various ways the way you get that is by moving the tip of the tongue if that's the part of the tongue you're using to make the S sound closer to the teeth the lights the lights and what's interesting here is that those teeth are further forward than they might be in somebody else mercury you sort of say I'm a big star star star Moloch and we'll punch a hole in the sky sky Wow Claire Foy queen elizabeth ii 25 years ago 25 years ago my grandfather broadcast the first grandfather broadcast the first of these Christmas messages so Claire Foy's accent here is clearly a kind of antique RP RP has received pronunciation it's that accent we associate with the British upper classes and upper middle classes queen elizabeth ii has a very heightened RP accent here's Her Majesty the Queen I very much hope but this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct I think if Claire Foy had gone for that accent precisely it might have been too much here's Claire Foy is version I very much hip but this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct so she's catching the spirit of it she's doing a lot of the vowel sounds most of the way but not all the way I think that's a great choice here I took a lot about oral posture which is the shape and feel of an accent it's kind of the logic that holds the individual sounds together because the individual sounds arise out of that oral posture the oral posture for this accent is very high the jaw is high the tongue tends to be a little bit tenser in the mouth and so we get some sounds that are a little bit higher a little bit tenser in terms of the tongue position in the mouth you can hear that in the pronunciation of the trap vowel in the word happy happy Christmas here's the Queen pronouncing a similar vowel sound with that raised position happy Christmas happy Christmas another example of this connection between this oral posture and sounds is in the goat vowel you can hear it here in the word remote and here's Her Majesty the Queen rather remote figure - many are killed well rather remote figure to many of you Joseph gordon-levitt Edward Snowden well they'll charge me under the Espionage Act and they'll say i endangered national security and demonize me and my friends and family and they'll throw me in jail it's so cool he's doing so much so Edward Snowden has a really particular an interesting vocal quality some of which comes from actually pushing down on his lyrics he's physically lowering it I have a really prominent Adam's apple you can probably see it so here's the real Edward Snowden my name is Edward Snowden and here's Joseph gordon-levitt my name is Edward Joseph Snowden there's a very characteristic thing that Stoughton does with what we call a high fall it's got a shape like that in terms of the pitch contour you can hear it here on the word passport passport here's Joseph gordon-levitt America was founded on passport founded on Passport trapped me trapped me Computers Computers and here's Joseph gordon-levitt on in the world everyone in the world in the world and really wrong really wrong really wrong even when it's not exactly the same amplitude is still the same shape computers really will trap me security O'Shea Jackson jr. Ice Cube me all the way in a house I just paid for up the strength of what you told me I mean you gave me your word I want to talk about a particular feature of English called th fronting th sounds or most of the time made on the teeth tip of the tongue either behind the upper front teeth or in between when those sounds are realized as more of an effort V sound so with the lip and the teeth so this pose or mouth roofless we call that th fronting because it's a little further forward so IceCube demonstrates th fronting here and the word ruthless and the ruthless posse the wolf the wolf and in this rap he demonstrates the same thing in ruthless and in toothless here's O'Shea Jackson jr. ice cubes real son doing the same thing in this rap on one of those two words but not on the other one so Ice Cube is his actual dad apparently he had a lot of input into the performance in all kinds of ways so I think that's cool are we finished here gary oldman Winston Churchill we shall fight on the landing grounds we shall fight in the fields and in the streets this is an extraordinary performance Churchill's s sound was kind of the opposite in a sense from Freddie Mercury's s sound it's not hyper sibilant it's hypo sibilant so it's lower pitched and the way that happens mechanically is that the part of the tongue that's making that S sound is a little bit further away from the teeth instead of being closer to it further away you get the lower the pitches exertion you could try that yourself move the part of your tongue makes your s tongue tip up tongue tip down closer to your teeth and then further away you can hear the pitch raise and lower as you do that so church also is pretty far away which gives it a lower pitched s than Freddie Mercury's higher pitched one so here's Rami Malik's hyper sibilant s punch a hole in the sky sky and here's Oldman's hypo sibilant one [Music] there's yet another detail of the way he's making this single sound which is that Oldman is doing it with his tongue tip down so that the groove for the Airstream is in that part of the tongue right behind the tip and Churchill did exactly the same thing and we can hear that listen to Churchill's boats and comrades there you bow-like good coverage seas and oceans which will fight on the Seas and oceans and here's Oakland on the seas and oceans cognates come Ridge Jennifer Lawrence joy Mangano it's lightweight it's the only mom that you ever gonna buy the best not be ever gonna use it is lightweight and durable and that is just me speaking from it my experience so I think this is a great example of that middle road more subtle route and playing a real person without going for some kind of uncanny oh my god that's the person's voice hi I'm joy Mangano and I invented the miracle mic the only mom that you ever go by is literally the last mop you'll ever have to buy so this is a really recognizable Long Island accent it's marked by a bunch of things one of those things is nasality and the way you do that or what I mean by that there's an opening at the very back of your vocal tract called the V low pharyngeal port it's the opening between the vellum which is the back of the roof of the mouth and the pharynx which is the back wall of the throat you can open that so air can escape through the nose and that's what we get is nasality if you go and you can close it and no air gets out through the nose which is what you have to do when you make a sound like but otherwise there would be no buildup of that air pressure and if it's closed we don't have a lot of noise ality and the boys what she's done is she's opened it a bit less so than the real joys well you know it's 300 feet of continuous loop cotton continuous cotton loops continuous loop runs definitely more than her own natural voice I never care I was with my two kids with my father care father care thank you thank you there's an intersection here between that nasality and particular sounds like the sound in the word hand it gets a little bit tenser I would get glass shards and my hands hands the way she says the word durable here is just pure Long Island so it's lightweight but very durable durable Kameron written at Kemper I knew a week before she died I was gonna kill her I knew a week before she died I was gonna kill her she said for seven years for seven years she said I haven't had sex with a man I haven't had sex with a man because of you my murderous son my murderous son okay so I think this one is really interesting he not doing absolutely everything he's doing some things very specifically and yet the effect is uncanny there's so much that just feels like he's caught the guy's soul she says why suppose you're gonna want to wait on us sort of all night and talk now so a couple of really specific things at Kemper's top lip barely moves and it's really only the middle thirds of the lips on the top and bottom that are active they hardly ever come into full rounding here's Brittain I wasn't impotent but emotionally I was here's Kemper I wasn't impotent but emotionally I was impotent it's doing some really interesting stuff with the pacing too so different from the real Cameron Britton who we can see here once we were done shooting I expected the character to leave but you didn't want to and here's this very slow deliberate pace with these very carefully chosen words she had a very violently outspoken position on men and here's Kemper again and had had very strong and violently outspoken position on men okay John David Washington Ron Stallworth look here some people say we've got a lot of malice some say it's a lot of nerve and want to talk about something kind of basic but here's a term the term is rotisserie we can talk about accents as being Rohtak or non-rhotic can you give me any examples Rotech means we pronounce the R after vowel sounds where it's like car here fear non-rhotic accent would not pronounce those ours yeah the car something like that and Ron stallworth is a very consistently and obviously Rohtak speaker we always hear those ours after vowel sound I launched a investigation into the Ku Klux Klan a chapter that was for me chapter a chapter so Washington is doing that for sure the Escalade talk calmly firmly he's also doing something else interesting though which is when he's on the phone with the Ku Klux Klan he's bumping up the rotisserie national director - huh director - no sir and what I mean by that is something very specific and physical this weird articulation that is American are involves the sides of the tongue coming up and touching the upper molars and the bicuspids on the sides and sometimes pressing out against them bracing muscularly against the insides of those teeth ron Stallworth here and that's what we kind of hear is like a harder are pure Walter now the real Ron stallworth has said that he didn't actually do that he did not change his voice on the phone he used his own accent that's what I said oh hell what I do though JD Washington does make that little adjustment and I think it's fascinating all right yeah absolutely sure he doesn't do it in an obvious way I think that would have had a different effect I kind of love the way this works though in helping to tell the story of this film I can tell you're pure Aryan white man from the way you pronounce certain words John Cusack Richard Nixon but do you really want that spoiled rich son of a to be your next president that isn't for me to say could be disastrous that's exactly what's gonna so I think there's a few ways of approaching this you know one of them of course is we can all think of performances where somebody has gone for a really uncanny almost eerie Eve occasion of a real person we see at the other end of the spectrum I think sometimes both people will play a real person and decide kind of not to do anything to go for that person that can be an entirely artistically valid choice I think it all depends on what the story is and how you're serving the story it's kind of an in-between approach to I think which is to kind of pick a few features and serve your lightly evoking the character and I think that's what Cusack is doing here I did I think he's very far away in his own natural voice from Nixon's voice and vocal qualities well I like doing a voice overs because they're so easy is that in the National Security Council so your people hopefully have been in the cabinet find the easy thing to do as an actor it looks like a tasty truth sometimes it is not yes it's easy so I think that's probably a wise choice in this case he's pinning most of this I think on rhythm and that kind of grumbly drawn-out last syllable and I think it's effective for the story Thank You Susan all right let's look at another Nixon now this is about the Watergate nonsense well I'm not a crook I've earned everything I've got I had nothing to do with it okay so I think there's kind of a standard model Nixon we've seen a lot of Nixon's things like this CIA has no policy except what I dictate to you for this one if you really want to get inside Nixon's head you have to use a processor one of the things that I think a lot of these include is this very characteristic oral posture which has to do often with the sort of the lengthening of the tube that is the vocal tract in part by tensing the cheeks in and sort of squishing lips forwards with a lot of relaxation in the middle thirds of the upper and lower lips I have never profits they're the liars here you know I welcome this kind of examination it won't protect them from me the other thing he does though that's a little bit subtler is there's a little bit of what we call a pharyngeal squeeze which is a kind of tension or squeezing narrowing in the throat back sort of behind the various parts of the tongue and mouth and he does that especially on our sounds after vowels you can hear it here in 24 for instance at the age of 24 24 so here's Nixon doing it in the words require and quitter will require a quitter at the age of 24 that's a really neat and fine detail I think they cost me and one more Nixon here's Frank Langella you got to do a lot of things sometimes that are not always in the strictest sense of the law legal so I think there's another way to play a real person that I didn't mention which is to sort of slightly heighten everything right there we usually see this in comedy impressions this is not obviously this is a really serious performance and I think a brilliant one but it is interesting to notice the way he's kind of taken each feature each of these characteristic things and just heightened it slightly sort of turned the dial up to 11 when the President does it that means it's not illegal when the president does it that means that it is not illegal let's just look at Langella slip corners here and compare them to the real Nixon's I had nothing to no knowledge of the fact that it was going to be paid all of these features are there but in the real Nixon may be slightly more subdued and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life the rest I let the American people down I love the American people though my political life is over my political life is over Felicity Jones Ruth Bader Ginsburg a hundred years ago Myra Bradwell wanted to be a lawyer she had fulfilled the requirements for the Illinois Bar but she wasn't allowed to practice because she was a woman there's so much that is wonderful in this performance I am gonna be picky here and just pick one thing out Ruth Bader Ginsburg's native Brooklyn accent is consistently non-rhotic use the word gender to become a father with a partner and Felicity Jones does a great job of that right here Myra Bradwell wanted to be a lawyer lawyer but moments later she has a very Rohtak pronunciation of the word bar filled the requirements for the Illinois Bar we wouldn't expect to find that in a non-rhotic speaker I'm asking you to set a new precedent Claire Danes temple grandin I could see the world a new way I could see details that other people were blind to everyone worked hard make sure that I was engaged I think this is wonderful two fascinating performance there's so many details see detail physically I am movement and certainly certainly speech was a neurological disorder today Einstein would be diagnosed with some kind of autism blood speaking too I was for no speech until age three just a zero in on one thing which is she's changed the direction the orientation of her tongue tip when she makes tea d NS and some L sounds Claire Danes normally makes these sounds with her tongue tip towards her alveolar Ridge that gum Ridge behind the teeth thank you so much Mateen Mateen whereas Temple Grandin used the blade of her tongue which is the bit of the tongue right behind the tip so the tongue tip is oriented down and it's the blade of her tongue that's making contact or getting close to that alveolar Ridge you can hear that here to entertain a kid one time for five five teen teen time Claire Danes has adopted that completely kind of a hard thing to change that takes a while two two five five two five two amazing details Adrien Brody Salvador Dali I thank you sad eyes and big lips melting or the hot descend the one tear so that's ridiculous right I mean completely over-the-top here's the real guy look I see you do it in the ordinary way so he is - he was immensely theatrical very good yes what do you do with that do you tone it down because it's gonna seem like too much you think it's pens yes in Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson travels back in time and meets all his heroes and they're all larger-than-life so I think this fits in with that Salvador Dali in real life was kind of larger-than-life all no bueno fiddles no sir so of course he is in the film and it serves the story very good very good so we talked before about Winston Churchill's tapped our there's another kind of our that makes contact with that gum Ridge and that's a trilled R so in this case it's gonna make contact a few times Spanish has both kinds of are the tapped R is spelled with a single R and the trilled are conveniently is spelled with a double R so you can make a distinction between a word like pero and Pedro Dali does a trilled are here they Mendel's play Mendel and Adrian Brody in very theatrical seeming fashion because it's really theatrical to trill an R in English but Dali did it here's Brody suspended and Christian Bale Dick Cheney I think you cannot be blown off-course I think you cannot be blown off-course so Bale has actually said he wasn't going for an impression of Cheney I guess an uncanny a vocation of the guy focusing on what's the essence you know not wanting to do just an impersonation but there's so many fine and accurately observed details here physical things that sort of tilt of the head the way they had alternately sort of non side-to-side and comes forward in a nod for emphasis things like his vocal quality as well and of course that lip that's raised up on one side into a kind of a sneer here's something really fine look at the way the lips spread quite wide together with that head nod for emphasis here in bales performance on the word that you got a deal with that and on the same vowel sound and Cheney in the word ass and asked them if we thought when they asked in the gasps Michelle Yeoh on son Suchi have you heard anything yet quickly before they cut the line I think what could sort out a lot of problems any sign at all that they were let you go and very much in favor of negotiations ok so there's something here that is really a high-wire act Michelle Yeoh delivered on sons hoochies speeches in Burmese a language who doesn't speak that's kind of amazing I'm not sure her Burmese is perfect some Burmese speakers have said it's a little weird nevertheless an incredibly impressive thing to have attempted thank you her accent in English is a little bit inconsistent and I think this is one of these cases where the actor really would have needed an enormous amount of support and a lot of time I'd say six months to prepare for something like this when you include those Burmese speeches here we have her sounding mostly like Michelle Yeoh quickly before the cut line it's really from 88 until 90 we will continue in a colony fashion where's here we have her really nailing on Sansa she's very hyper educated Oxbridge English accent any sign of old soul they all have a stake all told all all have a stake in the future of this country I've never actually spoken in public before anyway if she didn't have the proper support and time which I really doubt she did did this all on her own it's still a really impressive job thank you Carmen ejogo Coretta Scott King what do you intend to say to these people dancer a lot of work has been done here and I don't intend to see it undone tonight let's go down a rabbit hole Coretta Scott King has two very different pronunciations of the word her really close to each other in this interview let's listen to them I also said to her you are so brave I didn't see her so they're inconsistent that's the person she's a real person and she's got two different pronunciations very different said to her Ciara said to her Sierra listen to karma Nijo goes to different pronunciations of the final syllable in the word Minister and in the word sir when is Rohtak with an R and one is non-rhotic just a vowel sound what do you intend to say to these people dancer you've said disrespectful things in the past minister that's inconsistent but it's inconsistent in a way that people actually are in their own accents that's important and interesting to note that real people have that kind of inconsistency conclusion speech is about the most physically complex thing we do as human beings so what do we need for that time and really good support really good coach actors don't always get that so I think these are things we always need to keep in mind with these performances but wow this is fascinating fascinating stuff I think we can all agree [Applause] [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 6,989,145

Rating: 4.9560595 out of 5

Keywords: technique critique, technique critique wired, accents, movie accent expert, accent expert, wired accents, wired accent expert, erik singer, erik singer accents, movies accents, accents in movie, accents in movies, idiolects, actors playing real people, rami malek, rami malek freddy mercury, rami malek freddie mercury, accent expert breaks down, dialect coach, dialect, dialects, dialect coach breaks down, jennifer lawrence accent, dick cheney christian bale, wired

Id: _6ohUUzh9kk

Length: 25min 20sec (1520 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/parkernorwood]

Interviewed this guy a few years ago. Extremely technically knowledgeable, obviously, but conversing with him without visual reference points really made me appreciate how well-edited these segments are to be entertaining and digestible* to a broad audience

*not indigestible, not heartburn

[u/Permanenceisall]

I never have much to add to the conversation, but god do I absolutely love these.

[u/Shame_LessPlug]

I love this dude, he's so knowledgeable, I can watch these videos over and over again. One small grievance I have is that he seems to be getting nicer now that he's getting bigger. Only a couple of grievances in this one. But he's always been pretty polite. Just seems like a good human.

[u/WizardPhoenix]

I hope he eventually talks about Damon Herriman in Mindhunter. His performance as Manson while short was the most amazing performance of any actor playing him I have ever seen. Like Britton’s it’s chilling.

[u/MyNameIs_Jordan]

This guy needs his own channel

[u/squirrely2000]

Hey its Dennis

[u/HobKing]

Fuck yes I love these

[u/superkickstart]

His creditentials are a bit questionable

[u/weebism42]

This was riveting- thanks for uploading