What do Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman and Matt Damon have in common?

Brad Pitt

Nicole Kidman

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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How To Be Batman

The Dark Knight is rising!  The final installment in the Christopher Nolan series is due to be released July 20 2012 in the United States.   Once again, Academy Award winner Christian Bale will bring life into the comic book hero known as Batman. 

How does he do it? 

How To Be Batman

(1)Destroy the Self! Become a Vessel

BALE: It's the opposite of self! It's actually saying, "I don't stand a chance being myself. I've gotta create somebody else in order to communicate. If I remove myself from all of my own memories and inhibitions and create another character… I can reach out and communicate in that way." So to me, it's actually about trying to destroy the self, and then you might be able to hit something. There's some quote, I think it's Oscar Wilde, "An artist puts nothing of himself into his art."

BALE: I'm not on a couch having therapy. And it's very limiting if I have to be able to relate every damn thing in somebody else's life to something that's happened in mine. At the end of the day, I'm faking it. Pure imagination, and it's only phony if you don't go far enough with it. You can become obsessive and it can get to the point where you're almost losing yourself. You've become a vessel. And then, things start happening.

(2) Push the Envelope! Be over the Top!

BALE: One word: Immersion. It doesn't matter whether I would be acting or doing anything else. It's about taking things a little too far. It's about you don't know the edge until you've gone over it. That fascinates me.

Overview

To create a believable character out of a comic book hero, Christian Bale digs deep to create the character.  One of the keys to Bale’s acting style is to repress the self and his own inhibitions.  With the self in check, Bale is able to become a vessel that enables pure communication between his character and the audience.  A secondary element is to ‘take things a little to far’ or push the envelope.  If you don’t push the envelope, you will likely end up with a mediocre result. 

Ideas for Thought/Discussion

(1) BALE: “I'm not on a couch having therapy. And it's very limiting if I have to be able to relate every damn thing in somebody else's life to something that's happened in mine.”

What does this statement refer to in the field of acting?

(2) Do you believe the artist can separate her/himself from their work?

(3) What do you think about the statement below? 

BALE: “It's about taking things a little too far. It's about you don't know the edge until you've gone over it. That fascinates me.”

 

Answers:

(1) He is referring to ‘method acting’.

(2) No correct answer just your thoughts and the thoughts of others.

(3) No correct answer just your thoughts and the thoughts of others.

Have great week!

ALEX

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