Friday, May 06, 2011
I was flipping through TV channels some nights ago when I caught a bit of Spartacus: Blood and Sand on HBO (It's on HBO here in the Philippines). It got me wondering... Why do all shows about ancient Rome (and even the new series The Borgias, set in Italy) utilize British accents? It's kind of silly, right? Shouldn't they be speaking with Italian accents? :)
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2 comments:
Reno:
If they speak with Italian accent, no one will understand.
Example, how can we understand something like:
"You-lookah-likah--him?"
LOL.
That would be:"You look like him!"
It's just like listening to PIDGIN English.
So, what do you do when you're making a movie about Italians in English?
It's either you let them speak in Italian and put subtitles underneath, or dub it; or use the British accent to make people understand. But even that is not quite guaranteed. People from London have milder English accent and it's good to hear. Cockney, however, is another story. He-he.
The best thing to do is use the western North American accent: from California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska (these places have the same accent and the mildest in all English-speaking countries in the world), hence, the model for standard English pronunciation utilized in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
In the case of Gerry de Leon (a serious filmmaker in the Philippines), but horror king in Hollywood: He used the actual voice of Filipino actors whose accents are not too thick and easily understood, but dubbed the voices of those actors whose thick accents are just impossible to be understood.
Can you imagine Mommy Dionisia speaking English in her movie to be released internationally? I could just imagine. :)
That's my beef with movies now-a-days. I'm a bit hardcore though. If the role's British, I get irked whenever producers hire an American just so they can get their investment back.
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