You Actually CAN Do Amazing Accents And Dialects in Your VO And On-Camera Work. Here’s How.

Raw transcript:

Hey there, it’s David H. Lawrence the
17th and I’m really excited. Uh today
we’re going to talk about accents and
dialects. of the things that I get very
frequently from new students, from
people who are reaching out to me on the
socials about voice over uh audiobooks
in particular, but voice over in general
is
questions about accents, questions about
dialects, questions about accuracy
requirements. I’m not good at it. Uh I’m
good at these but not those. Okay, cool.
because today we have a guest who is
going to blow your mind and make you
happy and let you off the hook and a
whole bunch of other things. He’s got a
lot uh of things on his plate that he
has to get done in the next hour if he’s
going to be uh given his certificate of
participation
uh for the social networks, you know,
when you when you guest on a live
stream, you know. Uh Jim Johnson,
everybody, Jim is my accent coach. Uh
Jim and my buddy Dan Oday do a course
called the accents class and we’re going
to be talking about that today because
currently you can register for the
accents class at a at a lower rate than
one might expect if you act fast. We’ll
talk about that a little bit later on.
But Jim, how you doing?
I’m doing well. How are you?
Your your internet connection is
beautiful.
Oh why thank you. It’s new. It’s new.
Look good on me.
Yeah, it looks really good. that and
your haircut and your beard trim.
Finally, you’re you know, if I recall
correctly, was it a few weeks ago you
were reporting live from some Eastern
European block country?
I don’t know where you were, but it
looked very very, you know, uh medieval.
Ah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I I uh
teach each summer in Prague.
That’s what it is.
Yep. Yep. So my wife and I go and we
teach each summer in Prague and and uh
so I was there for a big chunk of the
summer and and then came back and I’ve
been on a dialect recording tour just
recently doing recordings.
Did you record any accents or or or
English- speakaking uh accented uh
English in Czechoslovakia?
Uh only I think I only got a couple this
on this trip. it was so focused on other
work that I didn’t have a lot of time
for that.
But I I then when I got back from there
to the states, uh, one of the things I
do is travel around in my camper van and
and do dialect recordings.
So I was up in the Dakotas mainly. Uh,
oh yeah, around North and South Dakota.
And
Oh, yeah. North and South Dakota.
Oh yeah. Getting recordings around
around there. And yeah, it was really
nice.
So, when you hear uh I’m not talking to
you in particular right now, Jim, I’m
talking to the the person watching. When
you uh when your financial planner says
to you things like, “Well, if you can
figure out how to deduct this, then
sure, you can go take your trip to North
North Dakota.” Uh
Jim uh not only goes around the country,
the world recording people speaking in
English with their native accents and
uses that and has built this library of
recordings of those things, but he makes
those available to his students. It’s
part of the course. It’s a library that
is constantly being added to. When I
first took the course, it was in 1947,
and he’s been adding to the library ever
since, including how accents change over
time. There’s so much stuff to talk
about. Um, so the accents class uh is uh
is starting next week and the
registration is open right now. And
we’re going to put a little uh link up
here just so you know that if you act
before tomorrow night, Tuesday night at
9:00 Pacific,
Dan OD has been hornswaggled into taking
$300 out of his pocket and giving it to
you as as a bit of a break on the price
of the class. So just know that that’s
the case. Go to vioheres.comacents.
Mention my name, David H. March 17th
when you sign up and you’ll be able to
enjoy uh a really hyper version of what
we’re going to talk about this hour. But
that’s the link vioheres.comacents.
Now Jim um is a classically trained
actor. Jim is a retired college
professor. Before he retired he had
tenure uh so he was one of the bigwigs.
It was University of Houston, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. So, uh, I have friends in Houston
and one of them just flew in for the the
the Texans game this past month and we
won, you know. No. Yeah. But you’re not
a big sports fan, right? I wore my neat
shirt and you’re like, what’s that?
I I actually, one of the things I love
to do when I’m traveling is go to
baseball games. So, if it’s at all in
the summer, I’m not even that huge of a
baseball fan, but I love going to games.
I love going to major league and minor
league parks. So, I’ve been to a lot of
them around the country. I absolutely
love doing that. I kind of hate that
they’ve sped up baseball because I love
the slow motion of it. I don’t want to
watch it on TV, but I want to see it in
person and I want it to take as long as
possible.
Well, it’s a different experience in
person than it is on television. They
sped up baseball for television. So,
have you seen the Savannah Bananas?
No, I have not. I know. I know.
You know about them? Oh, I know about
them a great deal. Yes,
they could have called themselves the
Bill Vex if you know anything about
Cleveland Indians baseball or how Bill
Ve was a a showman. We and we’re going
to talk about accents and dialects at
some point, I promise. But um new of
course was the you know from the
Olympics when Steph Curry went as we
beat the French in the finals. Um when
you uh were teaching you also taught
Shakespeare, you also performed
Shakespeare. So you know there are
people who are sort of clinical experts
at accents and dialects, people who
teach uh others how to imitate very very
well. Uh in some cases you take a bit of
a different approach. First of all, you
use uh IPA and you use placement. And
when you teach, I always felt like I
wasn’t just getting an example that I
could um you know, use my powers of
impression to regurgitate,
but I actually knew where to place the
words the in my mouth, where to where to
place my tongue, you know, like I got
into the feeling of being part of the
culture. Why do that rather than simply
teach an actor how to mimic an accent or
a dialect? Well, you know, I will say
mimic mimicry, there’s an element of it
that’s incredibly helpful. But if you’re
struggling with something and you can’t
quite figure it out, you’ve really got
to have a method for figuring out how
how do I overcome this thing that
doesn’t come to me through mimicry,
through the through what I’ve done
before. And so that’s why I find it
really important for us to talk about
concepts like placement and intonation,
the musicality of it, and to have
methods for working on that. So, as you
remember, we do a ton of physicalization
in my work because I find that when
people physicalize, it makes a huge
difference for them actually getting it
vocally, getting it in their brain and
in their mouth. Um, yeah, by doing
physical actions that go along with it.
Yeah.
And I also, um, for me anyway, it helped
me when new words that I hadn’t expected
showed up in front of me and I had to
deliver them with whatever accent or
dialect I was trying to affect. Um, I
think one of the limitations that I’ve
I’ve seen others when they teach this
sort of thing is you can get the you can
get the the work done for the words that
maybe you’ve brought to the, you know,
coaching session,
but then during the rest of the book,
it’s like, you know, how do I do this
other stuff, you know? So, that
physicality was really helpful and it’s
a real core part of how Jim teaches in
the accents class. Um, when I uh last
saw you in person, you were here in
Southern California and you were uh
recording
a particular dialect
that is
is is pretty much limited to this area
and maybe a couple of the states around
it, but it’s that southwest
Hispanic
Spanglish accent with uptalking and a
little bit of fry and a little bit of uh
sort of salabic um structure that’s kind
of different from speaking in normal
English. How do you see those things? Do
you do you recognize those things as
they pop up on television or on the
internet or what what do how do those
things come to your attention?
Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you
know, one of the challenges too, boy,
does it annoy me actually when people
go, “Where am I from? Where am I from?”
And it’s because the reason that it
drives me a little crazy is usually
they’ve only said about five words
before they go, “Oh, tell me where I’m
from.” And and the deal is that most of
us have kind of this moderate middle of
the road um what’s called a mess as
opposed to a a baselect. So a bas is a
really really strong version. Yes, take
your notes. Conceptually, it’s an
important idea because a baselect is a
really, really strong version of an
accent. It’s like that strong localized
sound. And most people don’t have that,
but it’s really important to work based
off of that because you get a sense of
like what is it when it’s cranked up to
11, you know, and so that you get a
sense of what those elements are. And
then most people are speaking more
messically. And so they’re a little bit
more in this kind of land in between
that and like if it’s in the US,
something that I like to call generic,
you know, this generic American sound.
Yeah. Yeah. The baselect thing uh
reminds me of when I’m watching the news
at night here in Southern California and
there’s either a Hispanic or an Asian
street reporter who during the course of
the story is speaking with a Maslect
accent, but when they say words that are
native to their language, all of a
sudden,
you know, it becomes not Los Angeles but
Los Angeles, you know, and you get this
overdriven which is I I think you might
agree is a mistake that some actors make
when they’re performing with an accent
or a dialect. They push it so much to
show they did their homework.
Yeah.
They had a coach. They, you know, they
they push it so much that it kind of
takes the audience out of what they’re
doing. When you coach people, do you
talk to them about the balance of the
story versus the the artwork?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
And and you know, some of it I’ll say is
the balance of the story, but some of it
is also because somebody can do a really
strong version and it works, but it’s
really got to get integrated into them.
And that’s always an issue no matter how
heavy or light an accent is. I do like
to start with people going on that
really really strong end because the
strong version of the accent is where
we’re going to learn all these different
elements so we make sure that we don’t
violate those and tell people that we’re
not from there or that we are from
somewhere else. So we want to learn
those strong versions but then the
important thing is to get it integrated
and a lot of times the text is what’s
going to indicate that like um a lot of
times you know like one of the things
that I do too is I do a lot of recording
of people’s lines for them in dialect as
well. And so, especially if it’s an
English as a foreign language or as a
second language, I you look at how
fluent somebody is in their speech and
go, “Yeah, so the accent should probably
only be to this degree, and that’s what
seems right for doing this accent with
this text.” So, the text has to guide it
as well. And that’s that’s part of why I
appreciate that I’ve done work as an
actor as well because then I’ve I’m
really coming from like organic
ownership is what it’s got to turn into.
You’re sort of taking these individuals
accents and you’ve got to turn them from
this more generalized concept of what
various people who speak with this
accent are and then turn it back into
your own individual idioct. the way that
I know I’m throwing around fancy words
at you but
okay
an individual’s
I have a pen that’s working and so
um and I imagine baselect mezlect
idioelect idioelect more specific
uh idioelect is like an individual’s way
of speaking
and then another word I haven’t thrown
at you is acrylect which is like
generican would be an acrylect it’s that
it’s that mode of speaking that
oftentimes is thought of as kind of the
fancy mode of speaking old school it
would have been that RP, you know,
standard British. Um, which nowadays is
probably more like esturie things along
this line. That is the no accent
in England.
Yeah.
Even though it is an accent and everyone
has an accent, but Yeah.
Yeah. And here in the United States in
the 20s, 30s, 40s, maybe the
Mid-Atlantic accent, you know, was
considered sort of posh,
you know.
Absolutely. You’re absolutely right,
sir.
Where will we be? you know, uh, I I
wonder I wonder if it’s a joy for you to
watch accents
morph over time to see
uh, let’s just call it a celebrity or an
influencers’s idioct. I’m sure the
Kardashians had a lot to do with the
popularity of vocal fry. um moving into
the mainstream and moving into the point
where you know there’s skits about vocal
fry now and there’s skits about
uptalking and skits like I’m from 1940
sketches sketch comedy about it. Um,
when when you are working with an actor,
um, I I imagine that there are questions
that you ask about who their character
is in the story, if you’re not familiar
with the script. Um, what level of
engagement they’re um, you know, they’re
working in. If there were a waiter
coming into the room for one or two
lines, but the waiter’s a French waiter
and he’s snoody and maybe has some
comedy involved, that might change how
you do things to be more broad in your
accent because it feeds the comedy. And
maybe if it isn’t, you know, maybe if
it’s just like somebody bringing the
bags in and then leaving, okay, just
very very calmly. I mean you take a look
at the way the words do the heavy
lifting or not within the story is I
think
yeah styles definitely a part of it
styles a part of it time period is a
part of it and and place of course and
then people’s class like uh education
those kinds of things oftentimes have an
effect on it. Um, so yeah, it’s
definitely but definitely being able to
read the style of a piece. How broad or
how sort of grounded and realistic are
they going with with a piece? What’s the
time period for it along with that
style? Definitely has a huge impact on
on what you got to go for.
Yeah.
So now Jim has thrown out at least 400
or so phrases, not the least of which is
acrylect, idioelect, mezlect, and
baselect. Um, and uh, I don’t want you
to be fearful that when you work with
Jim, that’s the kind of word salad that
you’re going to be showered with. You
certainly will be given resources that
help you understand how this is all
constructed, but the best part of taking
the accents class is working with Jim
live during the sessions and you do that
in the class. Can you talk about that?
If people you you give you give people
samples, do they bring stuff themselves?
How does that work?
Yeah. Well, so what I actually do is I
write pieces for us to work on in the
class. So pieces of text and what I try
to do in those pieces is build in
certain uh building blocks that we’re
working on. So there are sounds like we
start with RP, old school standard
British RP, that very classic sort of RP
sound along that line, you know, Lords
and Ladies sort of things, but trying to
be a bit more grounded and realistic of
another time before. And there are
elements to pick up on through that
accent that I want to reinforce with the
words that we’re utilizing in the
monologue. And so we’ll apply that in
that accent. And then we actually move
on to cochnney. So we go with a very
strong workingclass basel. Right? That
sort of cochnney go very very strong
with it so people get a sense of it. And
then you know we want to start like way
over the top a bit and then we want to
play it so it actually becomes more
realistic. But we’ve got to make sure
that all those elements are in there.
And so the monologues, the pieces we’re
working on are really trying to utilize
certain principles that start to
transfer from one accent to another as
we’re reinforcing
concepts um that are both that are about
things like placement and intonation,
but they’re also about the specific
sounds like the scary phonetics that are
up there behind me that we don’t we
don’t spend as much time talking about
the phonetics as using them just as like
a framing tool. Like it’s important that
I know them and I can explain certain
concepts from them to people and that
they get the concepts around them, but
that they don’t actually have to know
and understand the IPA fully to get it.
But there’s little principles written
into it that are incredibly helpful to
people.
Yeah. I want to be clear to people who
are beer drinkers that we’re not talking
about
that IPA. We’re talking about the
international phonetic alphabet and I
have been subjected to uh accent and
dialect training in the past where the
academic approach was the approach and
the side cutaway of somebody’s head and
the IPA and where things were were
pretty much all that was given to me.
And yeah, there was a little bit of
practice, but I think that that’s kind
of reversed with you. In fact, I know it
is. And in addition to that, the library
of uh of of accents and dialects that
you’ve gone around the world and
recorded
are part of the course. They’re given to
you with the course and not just the
initi the library as it stands today,
but you also include any future updates
to that. So I’ve been your client and a
student for almost a decade now. And in
that decade, I’ve seen things change.
I’ve seen new um things kind of pop to
the front of of uh you know uh your
brain when you think about a certain
area of the country and how they sound
maybe based on current events or recent
you know big events. Um I know you were
recently on the Today show was that
right? Talking about southern accents.
Yeah. Yeah. I was on it was very
interesting. did like an hour and a half
interview, big walk and talk and all
this different stuff which turned into
about seven seconds maybe, you know.
Well, that’s what happens in radio and
television as you know. Um, we take but
we do take the best parts. We take the
best parts and the good news here is
that um you know uh Jim uh really
delivers and understands the acting
community. So, if you’re a voice talent,
if you’re an on camera actor, if you’re
both, certainly if you’re an audiobook
narrator and you have been uh avoiding
doing books that list anything in the
description for the audition of needing
to have an accent, uh this is the class
for you. It really is. Go to
vohheroes.comacents.
Let me put that back up on the screen.
If you act before Tuesday night at 9:00
p.m. Pacific, it’s going to be $300 less
than it will be if you wait until after
that. So, do go there, mention my name,
mention that I sent you, please, if you
would, because Dan currently is outside
yelling at somebody using a leaf blower
uh as opposed to being here with us. So,
he can’t he can’t actually know that
you’re going because of this. So, just
know that that’s the case.
vioheres.comacents.
And to that end, uh, talking about, um,
sort of the fear of or the avoidance of
doing this work, I tell my students and
I have told them for a long time that if
you feel like you can’t do it, it’s
okay. You know, you don’t have to be
super super spectacularly accurate in
your accent or dialect because despite
the fact that there are a bunch of
know-it-alls on the internet that will
come into your reviews and your ratings
area on the title that you’ve created or
in the comments of the the bit that
you’ve done or the fil the episode
you’ve been in or the film you’ve been
in and tell you just how bad your
Minnesota accent is because I grew up in
in Twin Cities, you know, as they’re in
St. Paul, they’ll tell you even if you
grew up there as well. I had somebody
tell me that my Cleveland accent was
lacking. And I’m like, really? Is that
the case? Really? You know, I mean, what
are you going to do? Uh, on the other
hand, there are, and this is what I
wanted to ask you, there are accents
that some people avoid because they’re
fearful of being labeled as racist,
classist, misogynist, sexist, agist. Um,
I did a book that uh there was a street
preacher in and I just went for it and I
was really happy with it. I was hoping I
wouldn’t get bad reviews and in fact, I
didn’t. Uh there was one lady who was
African-American left a review for me
and she said, “This guy’s white. I
didn’t know this guy was white.” You
know, and so that was that was a win for
me. Um when someone is presented with
that kind of fear, what kind of advice
do you give them?
Well, I think whatever you do, you want
to come at it with with respect and
appreciation for it. And ju even just
coming at it from that mental space and
doing like due diligence of serving that
character in that moment and moving that
story forward, serving the story, that’s
what’s absolutely essential because, you
know, if the story is not moving forward
with it, if the and if the character
isn’t serving that, then we got a
problem. And so you being able to do it
to a degree that lends validity to it.
So
an accent full on full out or if it’s
about doing some of the essential
elements of the accent so that people
get the spirit of the character that’s
sometimes appropriate if you’re looking
at something like audiobooks that that
having that sense of placement and
intonation end up becoming the biggest
key for tying that together. Um, so, so
th that’s part of why we spend so much
time focusing on those elements.
So, it’s not just the accuracy of the
accent, the accuracy of the of the
dialect, but also the level, the the
role itself, you know, what what is your
uh what is your job in the story? Is
your job to just kind of be the hot dog
vendor that hands somebody the hot dog
and it moves them down the path in their
conversation or are you the hot dog
vendor that hands them the hot dog and
then pulls a gun out from underneath and
shoots them? You know, it’s like what
what level are you working at? And I
would imagine that that plays a role in
even the amount of force that you give
to the lines that you’re delivering and
and the way you’re delivering them in
whatever accent or dialect you’re being
asked to use. And and also that um like
one of the things that sometimes comes
up in coachings is going okay great like
you’re you’re doing the accent but can
you stop demonstrating the accent to me?
Can you start to let that and we start
to work towards integration so that it’s
like ah great now you sound like a human
while you’re doing the accent and it
actually so
me so much of the time you’re better off
doing a not as good version of the
accent but doing it with truth and
connection than you are doing absolutely
accurate and it’s feels like it’s
disconnected that’s always problematic
or if you have all the sounds are Right.
But the placement, the overall feeling
of it of where it lives in the mouth is
not on. It’s going to mess up the sounds
and it’s going to make you sound not
grounded and honest and and connected.
There are a couple of extra levels that
I’ve noticed recently. Number one is
madeup languages. Uh Scott Brick, who is
arguably one of the most famous, one of
the most beloved audiobook narrators,
recently posted in an audiobook
narrator’s group. Uh hey, anybody here
know Klingon, you know, and it’s like,
uh, you know, and then you’re going to
have some people who are going to be
like, you know, uh, like Sheldon Cooper,
you know, they’re going to be, you know,
checking your Cllingon. Um, but you had
an experience with that. You actually
helped work on uh a product out of the
Game of Thrones world.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh Valyrian and um
Dothraki, right?
Yeah.
Dothraki of of working with uh so it was
for the launch um the big launch fest
for the final season of Game of Thrones
when they went to Southby. They were
doing a live
um interactive thing. And so I actually
prepped all of the 40 plus actors with
all of their different accents that they
needed, whether they were from the north
or from the south or if they were uh if
they needed to actually speak. We had
people who were speaking in Valyrian and
in Dothraki and needed to get those
phrases just right because I was like,
you know, you’re doing this for that one
person who’s going to come in and speak
it. I actually worked with a student
this summer and she spo she speaks
Cllingon so she knows Cllingon and
another student knew a bunch of phrases.
This was a couple summers ago but knew a
couple of phrases in uh Valyrian.
And so those are the people that you got
to be prepped for when you’re really
digging into those things. It’s Yeah. So
the other sort of second level thing
that uh Jim is so good at and uh has
likely encountered many times is the
notion of someone speaking English in
uh a an accent different from your own
imitating
your accent. And what I think about is
John Cles in a fish named Wanda when
he’s making fun of Kevin Klene and
saying bye cracky and he’s got he he’s
English and he’s and he’s trying to do a
bad American accent as this is like
layers of this is like a seven layer
tort of of accents and dialects. How do
you even start to unpack something like
that?
H it’s just got to be character driven.
You know, it’s got to be character dri
and and how good or how bad are they
supposed to be with it? Are they
supposed to transform completely? Are we
supposed to buy that this is a French
chef until we find out it’s not a French
chef? This f this chef is from from
Kansas. Um or is it something where
we’re supposed to see through it because
they just throw out a single phrase or
something like that where they’re doing
mockery? Yeah.
Yeah. So, just so you know, you watching
this video, Jim’s course along with Dan
O Day is called the accents class
and it’s only given uh you know, every
so often. It’s starting next week. It’s
kicking off next week. Uh the class
includes live sessions. It includes
homework. I don’t know. Um, I guess you
could call it that, but the notion of
doing the work outside the class and
also having resources
uh that are not only workable listening
to actual accent and dialect samples
recorded by Jim around the world. Um,
but also, uh, being assembled into a
library that allows you to you get an
audition, you you notice, oh, I need to,
uh, do a, you know, a Georgian accent,
and I mean, state of Georgia, United
States, as opposed to a Carolina accent.
You know, Jim gets pretty specific when
it comes to areas. People say, they make
two kinds of, you know, sort of
generalizations that I kind of cringe
at. They say British accent and I go,
“Which of the 300 British accents are
you talking about?” And then they also
say southern accent. And clearly there’s
a huge difference between a New Orleans
accent, a Carolina’s accent, a panhandle
of Florida accent, a Texas accent. And
you’ve got somebody that you’re staring
at there, the one with the beard that uh
has that kind of very fine uh acute
um experience with the differences in
those accents. So if truly you want to
be as accurate as possible, this class
is the way to go. And the other end of
that spectrum is if you are frightened
about doing accents and dialects because
you feel like you’ve never had the
facility to do it.
Jim is one of these people who just
makes you feel at ease. I mean, look at
him. Look at that baby face. He’s just
he’s just Yeah. That or biker face. I
don’t know which
baby biker. I’m a baby
biker. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I And now of
course I have to go make a video on that
site where you can make babies say
things. Um, all right. Going to Sturgis.
Uh, okay. So, the accents class is
starting next week. If you want to be in
the class and you want to be in the
class for $300 less than you would be in
the class if you waited until after
tomorrow night, Tuesday night at 9:00
p.m., uh, don’t go to
vohheroes.comacents.
Pay the extra money. But if you want to
save $300 and take it out of Dan’s
pocket,
and who doesn’t love taking money out of
Dan’s pocket, right? Uh go to
vioheros.comacents
and uh that’s where you’ll find the
information. Please mention my name when
you sign up. This is probably one of the
best classes in any category of classes
that I’ve been through. mostly because
Jim actually is a professor. He’s
actually he actually doesn’t just play a
a a highlevel teacher on television. He
is a highlevel teacher. He was a high
level teacher before he decided he was
going to, you know, play golf for the
rest of his life in Czechoslovakia.
Um but please consider this if this is
something that you want to do. If you
want to add accents and dialects to all
of the other tools that you have in your
voiceover quiver, in your acting uh
toolkit, this truly is the best course
you can take. And it’s also one of the
least expensive courses you can take. um
for what you get and the ongoing support
that you get because you know here I am
you know again almost a decade in in
working with Jim and my library of
accents keeps getting updated all the
time. So it’s an ongoing asset that
keeps uh you know sort of spitting off
dividends. It’s really worth considering
um when you are thinking about how the
idea of using an accent has become much
more um important than it was. I mean
maybe it’s audiobooks that did all that.
I mean you know they’re much more u
specific about what they want in the
breakdowns for audiobook uh auditions
these days. But when I think back to, I
don’t know, 30s, 40s, 50s, a lot of
German Nazi soldiers had English accents
because the actors that were playing
them weren’t German or didn’t weren’t
weren’t just, you know, told by the
director, you know, you should use a
German accent. How did how did accents
become
so important and specific? Was it the
internet? What happened?
You know, I Yeah, I think internet is a
big part of that. It’s it’s exposure. I
think it’s partially internet. I think
it’s also partially that people move
around a lot more than what they used
to. It’s all of it, I think, is all
about exposure. The fact that now we’ve
got exposure through ourselves moving
around or other people moving around or
through the internet or through access
to so many different sources of
entertainment
that it we’re living in a much smaller
world than what we used to. our
neighbors are a lot, you know, our
neighbors are a lot further away from us
because we have relationships with these
people over huge distances now that we
didn’t used to. So, I think that’s
definitely had an impact on it. It’s
also
um happily that there’s more well
there’s there’s more respect for the
fact that
those diff different people from
different places you actually want to
try to give some accuracy to that and
not just go ah that’s Bostonish
but actually get much more so that
somebody from Boston would go yeah I’d
buy that I’d buy that from Boston.
Yeah. And and I also that kind of opens
up the other end of the spectrum and
that is people who have very specific
and very very uh harsh to them accents
because when they go after a role that
doesn’t include that accent, they feel
like, oh, that’s going to hold me back.
How do you speak to people like that in
terms of the pride that you can elicit
from someone’s native accent?
Well, the the thing that I oftentimes
hear when I’m going around doing
recordings is somebody might say
something like, “Oh, I’ve got a terrible
accent.” And I said, and I’m like, “No,
you don’t. I love it. There’s a reason
that I’m here and that I that I do this
because I love them.” And when pe, you
know, people are almost always saying,
“This is my least favorite accent or
this is the worst or this is the best.”
I am always back at them with with
feedback that’s like, “No, no, no, no,
no. There’s not there’s not a accents
are not bad. I I still remember a I had
a I tried to keep it friendly a
conversation with a librarian in Utah
who was talking about the way people say
if somebody comes in here and says, you
know, I this weekend we went to the
mountain. She said, “Where did you go? I
don’t know what you said.” Oh, you
didn’t say the T in that word. And I
actually said, well, they did say the T.
It’s a different kind of T. That’s they
did a tea, but it’s a nasal released
tea. It’s a mountain.
And so I actually tried to sort of
pretend that I was teaching her a little
bit of something to try to help her to
unplug the fact that it’s like, no, you
got all this bias that you’re throwing
at this person.
Yeah.
And it’s unfortunate that that exists. I
love it when I find somebody who is like
very high in their field um and and
maybe highly educated and something like
that and has an incredibly strong
accent. I love that because it it kind
of kicks that stereotype. So often it’s
this stereotype of ignorance and it
kicks it in the teeth and I love that.
Yeah. The professor Guwello is who uh
I’m reminded of. Professor GZO has
narrated uh some of the great courses
mostly on American history and he has
the thickest
thickest western Pennsylvania accent.
You know, he’s going down there and he’s
talking about this stuff and and it’s
just delicious. It really is.
I love it. I love it.
And he’s so educated, you know. I I saw
somebody who posted a clip of what he
did. Oh, that’s Professor Gellzo. He’s
he’s uh you know I listened to several
courses you know that he taught and how
did you know that?
Well cuz he has gone up and down and
he’s going to go to eaten park and that
you know so uh you know it was it’s you
you can recognize people by that. I had
a client who was very concerned about
his souy accent his souy accent.
Yeah. And I said, ‘You know, one of the
things to remember is, yes, you can add
other accents, and we’re going to talk
about accent reduction in just a second
here, and I’ll be pummeling it with a
ballpeen hammer. Um,
you can talk about accent reduction, and
that’s what he came to me for. He goes,
do you know anybody who can help me get
rid of this? And I’m like, no, and I
wouldn’t suggest you do. What I would
suggest you do is add other options to
the the things that you can perform
with. You know, when you think about
Hugh Lori, uh, and, you know, how he,
you know, created a fairly generic with
a with a bit of a lisp, you know, uh,
you know, uh, general American accent
for House. So much so that my mom
thought that he was faking a British
accent when he was on the Tonight Show.
She called me and she said, “Why is
House sounding like he’s from Britain?”
That’s beautiful.
Well, he is. Um, but I I said, “Listen,
you should celebrate this, you know, and
when they need somebody who has a souy
accent, you’re not going to have to work
at all. You’re just going to be able to
do the lines, you know, hopefully
they’ll be written in the the syntax
that a Souy would use, right? And some
of the slang that a Souy would use.” And
of course, now he’s well known as one of
the lead characters in one of the Call
of Duty episodes, uh, one of the Call of
Duty games as a battalion commander from
South Boston. So nice.
You know, these things can happen. So,
let me talk a little bit about accent
reduction. I want to remind you that the
accent class is starting next week. If
you want to be involved, this is your
guy. This is your guy. That guy right
there on the screen, not me, the other
guy. Uh Jim Johnson teaches the accents
class along with uh Dan OD
and Jim will get you where you need to
go. And if you want to save some cash,
go to vioheres.comacents.
Sign up before Tuesday night at 9. Dan
will give you u a great rebate on your
on your uh thing. And Jim Jim, by the
way, uh is uh is on board with that. he
wants you to uh you know get in for
whatever whatever works best for you. Um
accent reduction. A lot of people uh
grow up a little bit
embarrassed maybe about where they’re
from. They want to shed that as quickly
as possible. You know, they want to move
to California, get rid of that
Midwestern, North Coast accent. They
want to get rid of that southern accent.
And yet, um is that the right path to go
to? Do you even approach doing accent
reduction? I well yes with a lot of
conversation around it because the
besides accent reduction is I I do
believe that there actually is accent
reduction because there’s a degree when
sometimes someone’s accent may make them
too hard to understand and that’s
usually when you’re looking at English
as a as a second language or a foreign
language. But once in a while, somebody
with certain elements and then it’s
about, okay, let’s learn about these
elements of your accent. What’s going on
there? Here are those sounds there. And
this is part of what they also just need
to learn to be able to take on other
accents to go, oh, what have you got?
Where are you coming from? What are all
those different elements? Is as they
learn about their own accent,
they It’s interesting. People from a
place are so often the worst ones for
judging
what that accent is. I just had a guy I
was recording from um from Northeast
Minneapolis and he was talking about the
northeast accent there and every time
that he was trying to do it, he would
actually kind of mess it up a little bit
because he was overdoing it a little
bit. when people try to demonstrate
their own or when I was in Boston, I was
getting recordings of people and I would
often ask them, “What what do you think
are some of the best and worst Boston
accents you’ve ever heard in in say
films or television?” Two people in a
row said, “Jeremy Rener in the town.
Best Boston accent I’ve ever heard.” And
the next person said, “Jeremy Rener in
the town. Worst Boston accent I’ve ever
heard.” It’s a great example of how
people just don’t get it. or I was
actually just working with an actress on
her Dutch accent for uh for a production
and she’d been working with a Dutch
person and was actually getting really
messed up because the Dutch person was
apparently playing up their accent and
was actually kind of messing up their
accent doing things and also didn’t get
the context of the story what what their
accent needed to be and what it needed
to not be. So oftentimes like the people
from those places are problematic. I
think I’ve gotten way off topic here.
No, the accent reduction thing was what
I I’d asked about and and
yeah,
I think you kind of covered that to a
degree. Do you do you offer the kind of
you said there was a lot of conversation
around it when somebody comes to you and
says, “I know you help people learn
accents, but can you help me get rid of
mine?”
Well, besides, it’s it’s it’s most
people. So 14 is this magic age that
it’s it’s considered linguists in
general see 14 as this magic age that if
you move somewhere before you’re 14, you
will change to speak like a local in the
new place. And that same thing goes with
a new language. But if it’s after 14,
you probably won’t. But one of the
things that actors have to do is be
really what
often times it’s easier to disguise an
accent inside of another accent rather
than trying to disguise it by making it
not be there. It’s really hard to not
anything.
So we want to learn about the elements
of an accent and then be able to go,
okay, so this element in this accent is
this and this is the same as what you
use in this. So we want to look at the
way that you speak actually as a
superpower. This is something that you
bring to the table that you want and we
also want flexibility. We want to be
able to play around that allows us to
make other choices as well.
Yeah. I I whenever you talk about, you
know, hiding an accent within an accent
and and accents uh in general as as an
actor would put them, I always I always
think about the movie with Joe Peshy and
Fred Gwyn and uh I forget the name of
the actress that played the the car
expert, but you know, they even make fun
of the accent ute.
you know, they make fun of the acts and
Fred Gwyn goes, “What’s a ute?” You
know, um uh and and I know there’s
people yelling at their computers and
their phones right now telling me who
the actress is. Uh and she’s one of my
favorites, too. She was in Spider-Man as
as
she even won the Academy Award for that
role.
I know. I’m so embarrassed. And she’s
one of my favorites. I’m so sorry, but
she’s amazing.
You know, when uh it fits,
it’s amazing. And when you’re a single
actor playing a single role that has a
particular accent involved, that’s one
level. But when you’re one of my clients
who is an audiobook narrator and they
have multiple characters maybe with
different languages because the story
ranges world worldwide
or between regions in a country uh
United States, UK um and they have to
switch back and forth between
accents and no accents or one accent and
another accent.
Um, how do you approach that with an
actor? How do you tell them uh
technically how to switch between those
accents?
It becomes about embodiment like
literally I want them to change their
physicality and realize the rhythm is
going to be different. The whole feeling
of it is going to be different. And so
changing what they’re doing physically
in the booth can make a massive
difference. I’ve also done a lot of work
I’ve done a lot of work as an actor
where I’ve done uh plays that are like
playing
21 different people in a show and I’ve
directed that and I’ve coached that kind
of stuff a lot. So I work with people a
lot who have to do a lot of different
accents back to back and it is about
creating these big distinctions that
involve a physical shift that includes a
mental shift like a whole way of looking
at the world. Um that uh you’ve got to
embody it right there and switch back
and forth in that way. That’s the only
way to do it is is to create it as more
of a complete thing. um and not just
look at it as here now let me slip into
that and it’s a little bit like this.
It’s like no no no we got to you got to
create a whole character around that to
make it actually work.
So, four weeks of this, four weeks of
intense training, lovely support,
one-on-one,
uh, uh, action, coaching, you know,
feedback. Uh, okay, that’s great. Let’s
try this. Well, in the coaching, part of
what I one of my favorite things about
it is doing the coaching.
Yeah. And part of why I love it is
getting to coach in a group like that
other instead of coaching in a single
individual because a lot of times what
happens is what comes up from working
with this person on it and the different
language I keep to create keep trying to
bring up different language for
explaining the same idea even because
what makes sense for this person doesn’t
necessarily make sense for that person
and so having a lot of different
interpretations of how to explain an
idea uh and having it. One of the things
that I ask students more and more as the
weeks go on with it is I go, “What did
you just do there? Give me your
description of what you just did.” So
that they start to create their language
for going, “Well, it was more.” And I
don’t care if they say it was more
purple. Like awesome. Purple took you in
the right direction. So this is where we
want to go. What if we spread that
peanut butter over the whole piece of
bread and bring that over? You found it
in this little phrase. Now, let’s spread
that into this other phrase.
That’s exactly what I was going to ask
you. I don’t know if this is a crutch
for me or if it’s common among actors or
if it’s brilliant and genius. I’m not
sure. But there are phrases that I use
to trigger my different and probably
have a dozen or more of them depending
upon what part of the country or world
I’m trying to get into. When I talk
about my Cleveland North Coast accent,
I’m always parking my car in the
driveway because it lets me do those
harsh A’s and the phrasing that one
would happen if one just got a copy of
the plane dealer, you know? I I that
triggers me right into where I need to
be. Is that common?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. an anchor like
that, an anchor phrase or a couple of
words, you know, I’m going downation,
that can make a massive difference for
somebody being able to take it on and
and what what they’re finding when they
do a phrase like that or a pair of words
or whatever it is, they start to get
into that physical posture of it that’s
potentially is their whole body, but
there’s also a physical posture inside
the mouth. This is that placement
concept. And that physical posture
inside of the mouth shifts almost all of
the sounds to the right place. And then
the number of sounds that you have to
actually have to pay attention to, you
know, and and work on those becomes way
fewer because you got the placement for
it and that shifts most of them. And
that’s why the placement and the
intonation are so massive for the work
of an actor. And that and that that
anchoring I like to use the term
anchoring. I love that that that kind of
a touchstone thing that you talked about
this trigger for you as you called it
that that that’s absolutely a great
technique. Yeah. I love it.
Yeah. And some of them are very very
short and they drop me right into it.
For example, Maryland natty boat and
that’s it, you know, inner harbor, you
know, or just hun. just saying han, you
know. Um, so these are the things that
you’re going to learn in the accents
class. Um, when this class came along
and it’s been taught for a while now,
when it came along, it filled a hole, a
void that uh I just it was just so
comfortable. It was so
uh lovely and and easy. You know, if you
think that accents and dialects are hard
because you’ve told yourself you can’t
do it, you don’t have an ear for it, you
don’t have the facility for it. If
you’ve told yourself that and you’ve
believed that, I’m going to ask you to
take that belief, set it aside as a
limiting belief that isn’t serving you,
and replace it with an enabling belief
that you can do this, and you can
approach this from many different ways.
And Jim Johnson is the guy that will
help you decide which of those many
ways, and it may be more than one, will
get you where you need to go in the
accents class. Uh, if you go to
vohhereroes.comacents,
you’ll be taken to the page where you
can sign up. Registration is open now.
You can save 300 bucks if you do it
quickly before tomorrow night, Tuesday
night, at 900 p.m. as we do this, uh,
you know, uh, show live. uh on the
interwebs on the social networks on the
simalcast. Uh Jim is your coach. Dan is
involved as well. Uh Dan uh uh sort of
manages things, bring things along. But
Jim, Jim is uh just an amazing talent
and brings a joy for this sort of work
that is infectious and is supportive and
is lovely and uh you get to take
advantage of all that Jim has been
through his entire life in terms of
working with accents and dialects and
his acting training because he knows how
to talk to you as an actor whether
you’re an on camera actor, a voice
actor, a stage actor, a combination of
those things as most of us are. Uh Jim,
I want to thank you so much for spending
the time with me today. Uh I know you
you have to go get some sleep because
this is going to be a long month for
you. Um and uh here’s hoping that people
head over uh to the link uh on the
screen and take advantage of it. The
link, by the way, is also in the in the
description of this video uh session.
Wherever you’re watching it, you’ll
you’ll find the clickable link there. Uh
Jim, thank you so much for for being uh
my guest today. Thank you, David. It’s
always lovely to see you and get to talk
about this kind of stuff. I’m a geek for
it, so I love getting to chat about it.
Yeah.
Yeah. All right. Thanks, man.
Talk to you soon.

(from YouTube)