Adapt
Hone
Practise
Succeed
On Set Voice & Acting Support
Voice & Acting Support for rehearsal, on set & post
When time is short, and nailing the shot is critical - it's one less worry for the director to have an experienced Vocal and Acting Support Coach for work both on set, in rehearsal, on location and in post (for ADR) to help actors find the voice, emotion and physicality of a character.
Experience both in front and behind the camera and mic means that I can support the production team, director and cast effectively and quickly. As a working actor and voice technician, my understanding of the acting process and voice allows me to guide actors to physically inhabit a modern or period accent (or new vocal quality) safely and believably. Merging the new voice with the physicality and mannerisms of the character helps serve the text, the arc of the story and the director's intentions.
On high-pressure sets with big crews and technical shots, I know exactly when to give precision coaching to help enhance an actor's performance without getting in the way. I am a highly adaptive addition to any crew: supportive, precise and invisible, but always within earshot of the director or actor when needed.
Areas of expertise and support include:
- analysing speech patterns
- accent and dialect support
- focused work for those actors for whom English is a second language
- creating and discovering a character's unique voice
- creature and animal voices
- technical and precise voice direction
- safe shouting (retraction) and vocal care
- close mic work
- text work, phrasing and believability
- learning and/or feeding lines
- Meisner, Laban, Estill, Linklater, Berry and the Flow techniques
- achieving believable, emotional acting
Kiev Diaries
(Warner Brothers production)
I'm very proud to have recently been part of a Warner Brothers crew, working in rehearsal in UK, then in Kiev as On Set Technical Voice and Acting Coach. A huge thank you to Ben and the clients who worked two years on this and had to pitch it 26 times!
The director was incredible and was running a 2D and 3D sets on an intense, physically demanding movie trailer for a soon-to-be-released video game.
In London during rehearsal time, I worked intensively with the lead actor focusing on accent reduction, textual phrasing and believability. On set, and at the location hotel, I continued this work, as well as specialised coaching for the highly physical actors and stunt team focusing on: accent, creature vocal support, voice projection and getting the voice in the body, shouting, phrasing text and being totally believable.
The Kiev film set was freezing with sub-zero temperatures, rain machines, smoke machines and incredibly heavy costumes when wet, so vocal care and hygiene were vitally important for cast and crew alike.
The addition of teeth for the creatures meant muscularisation of the text for diction, and learning to retract whilst shouting for a prolonged time was key. I was right there between takes to re-work lines, help actors find other ways to reinforce a moment, or to nip into the scene when the director asked and give the character or creatures technical voice and acting support to deliver a line or look with more thought or vocal resonance. All this helped focus each actor so a cold breath, a movement, sound or line that the director needed was nailed.
The entire film crew, the prosthetic team, actors and stuntmen were at the top of their game: I love my job!
